


Masked Passions

by Oceans_Away



Category: Lore Olympus (Webcomic)
Genre: A weird amount of Annie Lennox music for a Greek orgy, Afterglow, Alcohol, Bisexuality, Colourful drinks, Dirty Talk, Don't tell Hestia about this, Edging, Eros is a good good boy but Hermes can make him do bad boy things, Every character in Lore Olympus is so damn bangable, Face-Sitting, Flirting, Friends With Benefits, Funky Hermes boxer shorts, Gambling, Get Hermes and Eros laid, Getting Together, Group Sex, Heavy Petting, Hermes and Eros get everyone laid, Hermes is a bad bad boy, Lesbian Sex, Light Bondage, Making out in the damn sky, Married Sex, Masked ball, Mischief, Multi, Oral Sex, Orgy, Outdoor Sex, Party, Pole Dancing, Pretty fireworks, Public Sex, Seduction, Sense Play, Sex, Shameless Smut, Spells & Enchantments, Temperature Play, Tricksters, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:34:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25244722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceans_Away/pseuds/Oceans_Away
Summary: Hermes throws a masked party in a woodland park. Lanterns glow, stars sparkle, games are played, all the food is dessert and all the drinks are goofy colours. But he has bigger plans for tonight. He seduces the god of desire and together he and Eros turn the party into a night to shake things up on Olympus for a while to come.It's an orgy, bitches!Chapter 1: Seduction and heavy petting, no smutChapter 2-11: AN ORGY HAPPENS. (Check Chpt 2 for menu)Chapter 12: No smut, the morning afterSet at the end of Season One, I guess?[CW: Apollo is briefly there, but no orgy action for him, we shuffle him off before the smut. Zeus does get orgy action, I'm sorry about that. There is some light reference to Zeus' past cheating, Apollo gets quite cheated on.]Beautiful art byChinchelaandTeam Persephone!And INeedMoreHadesBeforeISwoon recorded a silky-smoothpodfic!
Relationships: Amphitrite/Poseidon (Lore Olympus), Aphrodite/Ares (Lore Olympus), Ares/Aphrodite/Persephone (Lore Olympus), Athena/Artemis/Hecate (Lore Olympus), Eros/Hermes (Lore Olympus), Eros/Psyche (Lore Olympus), Hades/Persephone (Lore Olympus), Hera/Zeus (Lore Olympus), Hermes/Daphne (Lore Olympus)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 114





	1. Starlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermes hosts a masked party in an Olympus woodland park. He speaks to friends, meets Ampelus, then finds Eros and persuades him to work some magic.
> 
> Song: [Sweet Dreams, Eurythmics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeMFqkcPYcg)

What fool said that there are only five senses? And that they’re all separate? We hear music in our muscles, champagne fizzes in our ears, the shadow between an open collar and that sliver of skin feels like chiffon, perfumes are coloured in pink and purple and frost blue, laughter has a taste, hidden desires smell like dark chocolate. 

Hermes’ lips curled in a clematis-vine smile.

He took a deep breath. The last of the rainfall a few days ago was being drawn from the soil in the vast woodland park and slithering into the air, releasing an earthy, green scent infused with ice cream and flowers and gin and vodka, vanilla and oranges and limoncello, hairspray and expensive cologne. The gods moved gracefully through the velvet shadows of trees; all sharp suits and shimmering dresses, droplet diamonds and glinting silver, stiletto heels puncturing the grass, tie-knots like magnolia buds. Lanterns bobbed in the branches, their warm light winked on sequins and glowed on bulbous glasses of brightly-coloured cocktails, illuminated wide, crescent rows of teeth and sheened on body glitter. The shimmer of the scene reflected the starry sky, two cosmoses gazing at each other. The song pulsing from the obelisk speakers thumped in the ground, knocking on the soles of Hermes’ pointed shoes. Through it, his sharp ears picked up the clack of dice on the gaming tables and the clink of toasts and the whisper of hands subtly sliding down the backs of slinky dresses and tailored jackets. 

His blood was up. He was dreaming. He was crisply alert.

It had been too long since they’d had a real party.

And this one was special.

This one was masked.

Tonight, Hermes, as host, had fooled them all into joining his merry band of tricksters. They came entranced into his lair, eyes bright in the shadows of their masks, gleaming with the promise of fleeting secrecy and new permissions. 

_Drink up, kids. Dance. Delude. Forget who you are. Don’t think about the sunrise._

He toyed with a ruby cuff link. He dragged his fingers through his scarlet mane. 

He stepped into the circus like the ring-master he was born to be.

A long drinks bar flared with rainbow light from a glass panel on the front of the counter and the crystal bottles in a wall behind it. A spindly, sunflower-yellow nymph was spinning bottles as he conjured curious cocktails for a small gaggle of guests, eyed in particular by a cyclops in a jacket that was too small for his shoulders. Close by, a set of casino games had been set up and a rowdy group were placing outrageous bets and tossing chips and dice and cards across green felt like they were scattering seeds. A few harpies in diamond-patterned clothes swooped close overhead, juggling fire and swallowing swords, casting hot, rushing light and strange shadows and bursts of merriment through the air. Two more tottered on stilts and danced balletically, like praying mantises. Three circular platforms exhibited nymphs, turquoise, raspberry and lilac, wearing little more than a thick coating of glitter, looping and swinging and twirling around poles, hips and hair bumping and tossing to the beat humming from the music. The rainbow light from the platforms formed a kind of veil around them, draping them in gossamer, making them look ethereal, regal - undulating flames through pale evening mist.

_You’ve outdone yourself this time, Pal._

Hermes had filled the park with places to be comfortable. Swings wound with flowers and hanging basket seats rocked from the branches, large cushions and picnic blankets were strewn about among tables crowded with bizarre and deluxe dishes, mostly desserts. He was a bit of a party mom after all, and you didn’t want people getting too drunk, so you needed plenty of E numbers to stay balanced. _Science_. 

“Hermes!”

Daphne was waving by the bar, wrapped tight in a very small amount of lime green fabric, her long legs crossed elegantly as she leaned on the counter and flooded her body with its rainbow glow. Apollo was beside her, rested on his forearms, sipping something orange and scrolling his phone. 

“Hey!” Hermes flashed a dazzling grin and swaggered over. He lightly touched his hand to her waist and pecked her cheeks, one, then the other, noticing a soft glimmer of a blush just under the mask of pink flowers swarming around her heterochromatic eyes, rose and bluebell. “Glad you guys could come.”

“Wouldn’t miss it!” Daphne beamed. She was already tipsy, a coil of pink hair had come down out of her up-do and bounced by her cheek. “Right, Sweets?”

She looked brightly at Apollo. Apollo glanced up and pushed a slick smile onto his face that nudged the gold tendrils of his mask, a shining image of the sun. “Of course not, Baby Girl.”

“You having a good time, Roomy?” Hermes asked, slightly pointedly. 

“Yes, thanks.” Apollo replied without feeling.

“Bet you are.” Hermes slid his gaze back to Daphne. “You're here with the prettiest date.” 

Apollo shot Hermes a look as Daphne broke into bashful giggles and playfully cuffed his arm. “Stop!”

“Never.” Hermes chuckled, deftly plucking a pitcher of turquoise liquid with a white wisp on the surface from the counter and refilling her glass. 

She peeked at him over the rim as she slurped. “Golly, this stuff goes right to my head.”

Hermes’ canines poked from beneath his fine lips. “That’s the idea.”

“You are so bad.”

“What do you think makes me so popular?”

Daphne giggled again. Apollo stood and slid his hand along the bar, scooping her into his shadow like a vulture putting his wing around carrion. “You might want to slow down with those, Baby Girl.”

Daphne looked a little apologetic and pressed her bubblegum lips together. 

Hermes clucked his tongue. “Come on, Man, no one ever described a good party as slow.”

Apollo jutted his shoulders, enclosing her further. “Not everyone has your capacity for speed.”

Hermes felt the push of Apollo’s gaze, dark rays, the inverse of his sun-mask. He hated when he got in moods like this. He glanced at Daphne. “I really am glad you’re here, guys.” He said levelly. Then he stepped back and spread his arms with a flaring grin. “Enjoy!”

He bowed with a mock flourish, glancing up into her eyes with an infinitesimal wink, smiling to himself as she blushed again. He straightened, turned on his heel and walked with a bounce and a flutter of feathers into the fray. 

A little way off, in a cluster of cushions, Hecate, Artemis and Athena had formed what looked like a bohemian literary salon. Artemis sat on a swing, her sleek hair in an ink-spill streak down her back and her black dress and indigo skin making her look like a cutting from the night sky. Her mask was bone white, the shape of a deer’s skull and adorned with a delicate pair of small antlers, between which a silver crescent moon hung on a fine chain. Hermes cocked his head like a robin and eyed the way her strong back arched as she leaned forward and plucked a cherry from the bowl at her feet and sneaked it between her fine teeth. Athena reclined easily in a dashing dark suit, the bow tie undone and lying rakishly around her collar. Her mask was a staring owl, the grey feathers blending into her sweep of silver hair. She was laughing at a joke Hecate was telling. Hecate had a sardonic twist to her mouth and her yellow eyes were pleasantly frightening within a black cat mask. She was cross-legged and straight-backed on a bench in a burgundy velvet suit with a sapphire at her throat. Hermes spun by a passing waiter and lifted his tray of tequila shots and lime wedges out of his hand without missing a step. The waiter looked bewildered as he carried on his way and suddenly noticed his hand was empty. Hermes sauntered to the assortment of woodland creatures and leaned down to present them with the tray.

“And then the minotaur says…! Oh. Hermes. If it isn’t my employee of the month.” Hecate’s grin was as feline as her mask.

“Evening, Boss.” Hermes said cheerfully. “Where’s Big Boss?”

“Hermes, you wound me.” Hecate said. “I’m the Big Boss at Underworld Corp.”

“Well, I can’t say Blue Boss, that applies to both of you.”

“How about Old Boss?”

“Do you want to get me fired?”

She scoffed. “And have to rely on Thanatos?”

He shrugged. “You never know, he may flourish out of my shadow.”

Artemis leaned forward and plucked a shot glass between finger and thumb. “How’s it going?”

“Better for seeing you, Friend.” Hermes elbowed Artemis playfully. 

She tutted and rolled her eyes. “He’s in host mode, I hate host mode.” 

Hecate plucked a glass too. “Oh, you mean the desperately charming one?”

“The slippery, slimy one.” Artemis elbowed Hermes back.

“Whoah!” Hermes clapped his hand over his middle. “Body blow, Arty! I’ll have you know host mode is why people come to my parties.”

“You sure that’s got nothing to do with you hiring literal pole dancers?” Artemis asked flatly.

“Trust you to focus on them, you randy son of a bitch.” Hermes snorted.

Artemis punched his arm and shot a nervous glance at Athena as Hermes laughed. He picked up a glass himself. “Down the hatch!”

He, Artemis and Hecate tossed their tequila back. Hecate took it with ease. Hermes and Artemis pulled identical warped faces and scrambled for lime, nibbling on their wedges in unison then wagging their tongues to get rid of the sourness. Athena looked at them with the amusement of your cool aunt letting you raid your mom’s liquor cabinet.

“Not drinking, Athena?” Hermes coughed.

“I prefer a clear head.” She said.

“Quite right, me too.” Hermes said smoothly. “I mean...” He picked up another shot. “Usually.” He didn’t let it touch his tongue this time. Heat and spice leaped at the back of his eyes. He dropped down and nestled the tray among them. “I definitely can’t be trusted with these, I’ll leave them in your capable hands.”

Hecate picked up another shot and handed it to Artemis. Their fingertips brushed on the glass.

“So where is Other Boss?” Hermes asked.

“Hecate swivelled her gaslamp gaze from Artemis. “He worked late, but I told him there’d be consequences if he didn’t show.”

“Good.” Hermes stood and tugged his slim jacket straight and his red tie jaunty. “He’s an important guest.”

“He’ll hate that.” Hecate smirked.

Hermes barked a laugh. “Yep." He clapped his hands. "Well, have a great night, ladies. There’s a magician around here somewhere and everything.”

He squeezed Artemis’ bare shoulder, allowing himself a flicker of enjoyment at the feel of her taut muscle and warm skin. She patted his hand companionably and shrugged him off. 

As he walked away, Hecate called after him. “If some hack magician comes anywhere near me, he will lose a finger. Minimum.”

Hermes waved over his shoulder with a chuckle. He let himself be carried on the noise and the rhythm. He found himself drifting toward the casino. Poseidon was leaning eagerly over the craps table, rattling a pair of dice in his palm as a gaggle of river nymphs whistled and whooped encouragement. His eyes were sparkling behind his mask of green sequin fish scales and his hair was wriggling like kelp. Amphitrite perched on the mahogany rim of the table, her fountain of pale curls gushing over one shoulder and her white skirts spilling like cream over the edge of the game. Her mask was an intricate knotwork of silver and green that looked like it was woven from the fronds of coral. Zeus stood behind Poseidon in a golden lion mask and cream suit, rubbing his hands, and Hera folded her arms soberly beside him, one ear of her bunny rabbit mask kinked and oddly cute against her chic navy blue dress and delicate pearl adornments. Poseidon lifted his dice to Amphitrite’s lips and she gave him a sultry smile and blew on them softly. He beamed and flung the dice across the table. A beat, then a roar of triumph and a wash of cheers from the nymphs. Zeus clapped him on the shoulder and made a show of disappointment. He turned to Hera to involve her in the joke. She smiled stiffly and looked away. She fished a bottle of champagne from an ice bucket balanced on the table and started refilling glasses around the group. Hermes watched Zeus’ eyes follow her, watched his smile falter, watched him hook it back into his mouth. 

“Jam Pot!”

Hermes spun and saw Aphrodite waving like a lavender stem in a high breeze. She and Ares were standing near the dancers’ platforms, her in rich violet satin and a dark purple mask shaped like the cunning face of a fox and painted with lilac swirls and flowers, Ares down to his shirt sleeves, rolled up and tight around his large forearms, his mask that of a red hound. He had his arms looped around Aphrodite’s waist from behind, perched on a bar stool at a tall, narrow, circular table. He turned to nod at Hermes, but his gaze kept tugging magnetically back to the nearest dancer. Also at the table, her back a little awkwardly to the platforms, was Aphrodite’s handmaiden. Ampelus, was it? 

“Hey, Lady Love!” Hermes bounded to them. “And the Warlord!”

Aphrodite chuckled and slipped from Ares’ lazy grip, putting her arms around Hermes’ shoulders and enveloping him in her sugary, dark perfume. He breathed it in and returned her embrace. She pecked his mouth. His ears went hot. She grinned like, well, a fox, and pecked him again, a little longer this time to let him return it. Hermes got that same wave of pleasure he got when he ate popping candy.

“Alright, that’s enough, you glutton.” Ares smiled and tugged her back into his arms. “Sweet party.” He said.

“I do my best.” Hermes shrugged in false modesty. 

“I’m so glad you came to me for recommendations.” Aphrodite said with a twinkle. “The girls are doing a great job.”

“Agreed.” Ares husked.

Aphrodite reached back and patted his cheek indulgently. Then she flapped her hand at the handmaiden, in a long, loose white dress and a mask of plain bronze, shimmering in the lantern light. “Have you met my latest catch? Ampelus is a real star. Best staff I’ve ever had.”

Hermes smiled and nodded at the indigo nymph. She shifted shyly and tucked her long hair behind her ear. 

“Whoah!” Ares joked. “What about me?”

“Staff, Honey Bear, not slave.” Aphrodite raised a large glass of blood red sangria to her lips and Ares pushed it down and ducked to kiss her, lingering against her lips so the snouts of their masks snuffled each other. 

Hermes leaned to Ampelus and murmured. “They won’t notice if you go mingle, please don’t be a third wheel for your first Hermes party.”

Ampelus laughed softly, clearly a little nervous. “Oh, it’s fine. I have no idea how to mingle.” 

“Well, in this life you need one of two things, skills or connections. Lucky for you, you just made a connection.” He stuck out his elbow for her to take. “Show you the ropes?”

Aphrodite snapped round from Ares’ mouth, leaving his mask out of place and his lips puckered. “Hermes, you’d better not be up to no good.”

“Always, Parma Violet.” He said. “But no good is at least better than all bad.”

Aphrodite and Ares both frowned sceptically. The be-glittered nymph hooked her leg around the pole and whipped around it with her hair streaming sky blue. Ares was immediately distracted. Aphrodite was too, but she hid it better. 

“Fine.” She said, then pointed at him over the top of the fat slice of orange oozing down the side of her sangria. “But hands to yourself, Firecracker.”

Hermes stuffed his fists into his pockets and poked his elbow more insistently toward Ampelus. “Look, Mom, no hands.”

“Good boy.” Her sharpness turned sweet with alarming speed. “Have a good explore, Ampelus.”

Ampelus looked at her with uncertainty. Then at Hermes with more uncertainty. Hermes wagged his elbow invitingly at her. She looped her arm carefully through his. He felt her let him pull her into step, relaxing into his gait as they wandered away from the couple, now gazing up at the sky blue dancer with their fingers interlaced. 

Hermes walked slowly, which was a push for him, but Ampelus felt on his arm like an untrained hawk, like she might swoop off if he made a sudden movement. His wings clipped the swish of her dress occasionally, drawing their glances to each other with a small stumble and covering chuckle. He took her on a tour of the party, got her a drink with a curly straw and sugar on the rim of the glass, watched how her eyes danced like honey bees around the scene. A centaur was giving a ride to two mint-coloured nymphs, the one in front braiding his long hair and giggling. Two fawns were skipping along like pebbles on a stream, playing squealing pan pipes, drowned by the pound of electronic music. 

“This is like, _new_ new for you, isn’t it?” Hermes asked after a few minutes.

Ampelus didn’t look at him, she kept gazing out like a botanist in an untraversed jungle. “I’ve been to parties before, but this is…” She trailed off. 

“Where are you from?”

“The mortal realm.”

“Ah, yeah, it’s pretty different down there.”

She tucked her straying hair back again. “You have no idea.” She said, almost under her breath.

Hermes frowned curiously at her. There was something intriguing about this one. She seemed like she was keeping a secret. No, like she was the very incarnation of secrets. Every time she spoke, a hundred unsaid things went fluttering into the air like moths. He’d always had a talent for spotting potential, the unsaid, the unrisked, the possible. This woman, so quiet, so enthralled by every tiny thing, she teamed with possibility. He sneaked his lower lip between his teeth. She sucked on the curly straw of her bright green drink. Her nose crinkled under the edge of the mask. 

“Anything you miss?” He asked.

Ampelus paused. “Not as much as things I’d miss not being here.”

“That’s sweet.” He bumped her with his shoulder. “OK, what surprised you the most, when you moved?”

She laughed and the sound was clear, clean. “Cars. Definitely cars. Actually, no, microwaves. No! Phones.”

Hermes laughed too. “Do you wanna just say tech?”

She giggled and nodded. She sobered, but a smile nestled like a sparrow in the corner of her mouth. She spoke wistfully, looking out into the party. “The stars here are the same. I don’t know why I thought they wouldn’t be. But it was a relief." She raised her dainty chin to look up into the night and her eyes spangled. "It doesn’t matter where we are, it’s all under the same sky.”

Hermes tilted his head and regarded her. _That “we” felt significant. Someone here?_ “We’ve got to get you meeting some people.” He announced.

She looked startled. “I don’t know…”

“Come on, it’ll be fun! It’s a good crowd on Olympus. Actually, strike that, but it’s an interesting crowd, for sure.” He leaned down to her with a sly gleam in his eye. “You seem like someone who’s attracted to the interesting.”

Ampelus’ innocent shyness dropped for a moment and she gave him a look of equal warning and encouragement. 

_There you are._

He gave her a gentle pull with the crook of his elbow. “Trust me, I know just who to start with.”

“Oh?”

“Probably the easiest guy to get along with, and the darkest horse. Perfect combo for one part spooked, two parts curious.”

“That about sums it up.” Ampelus smiled and drifted a little closer to his side. She smelled of apples and incense. “Who is it?”

“Eros.” Hermes winked at her. “A literal sex god. This is a party, after all.”

Hermes’ elbow jarred as Ampelus stopped walking. He raised his eyebrows at her.

“I’ve already met Eros.” She said. “I work for his mother.”

Hermes tutted. “You’ve met no one if you’ve met them with their mom present.”

“Oh, but, you know, he’s been my ride home a couple of times. Can’t I meet someone new?”

“Sure, but I need to go say hi to him anyway, do you mind if we make him a pit stop?”

Ampelus’ face shifted, her mask making it hard to tell in what way. “How about I meet you later?” She said with a breezy smile. “I need to go to the powder room.”

“Powder room.” Hermes grinned. “Classy lady, you’ll fit right in here.”

Ampelus slipped from his hook and shrank away slightly.

“See you later. Don’t have too much fun without me.” Hermes instructed.

Ampelus recovered her ease. “Is that even possible?”

Hermes laughed. “A very good point. I like you. You can stick around.”

She met his eyes from the bronze shadows of her mask, her irises liquid amber. “I will.” 

She turned and walked away, the light twinkling on a fine chain hanging from her long, quill-point ear. Her white dress rippled like steam. Hermes watched her go, his curiosity piqued, the back of his neck a little warm. _Do. You’re something. I’m cooking tonight and I like a secret ingredient._

She vanished into the ebb and flow of the party guests. He breathed out and dropped his head back to look at the sky. The night was deep. It was the kind of night where you couldn’t tell if you were looking up to it or diving into it. It was the kind of night you could swim in, drown in. The stars frosted the darkness in swirls of cold, effervescent light. 

_All under the same sky._

He went a little dizzy. For a moment the stars seemed to shower down into the party and everything around him became a cauldron of sparkle and shimmer. He blinked. He breathed in the scents of earth and alcohol and sugar and the hint of bodies breaking through their perfumes. He came back to the ground. He set off in search of Eros.

*

“No! Back!” 

Persephone flapped her kid-gloved hand at Eros. They were sitting like two pink peonies on a neat little picnic blanket under an apple tree. Persephone was in dainty rose gauze and a butterfly mask that unfurled fuchsia across her face and gave her a look of permanent sweet surprise. She scooped teaspoons of ice cream into her glossy, gummy-sweet mouth. Eros was in elegant black suit with a hot pink tie and hibiscus button-hole, a delicate spray of magenta diamante on his broad jacket shoulders and an alluring mask of black lace. He jabbed his own teaspoon at her glass as she fended him off, her laughter popping like the bubbles in strawberry milkshake.

“Come on, Perse! Just one more scoop? Pretty please?”

“You’ve had half of this dish, you gannet!” Persephone swiped her spoon at him. “Get your own!”

“I can’t, I’ve been putting on weight.” He parried and lunged.

“Then why are you eating any at all?” She held the crystal dish aloft, the cherry on top catching the light hanging above them.

“Calories don’t count if they’re filched, that’s basic nutrition law.” Eros said loftily, his spoon reaching up to the dish like a giraffe to a leaf.

“What are you doing worrying about your weight anyway?” Persephone asked sincerely. “You’re in great shape.”

“Not for long, the way I’m going.” Eros dropped his arm, his mouth sloping down.

“You’re always talking about loving our bodies, Eros.” Persephone tutted. “Show yourself the same kindness. All shapes and sizes are pretty. You’re pretty at any size.”

Eros pursed his lips at being quoted back to himself. His wings, unfurled tonight and forming a kind of burlesque fan behind him, ruffled indignantly. Persephone held his gaze sternly.

“Fine.” He said out of the corner of his mouth. 

“Then you can have one more scoop.” She held the dish out to him, three white curls topped with tiny sugar flowers and rainbow sprinkles. 

“Thank you.” He perked up and dipped into the ice cream. 

“For real, though, Eros.” Persephone said gently. “You never get self-conscious about that sort of thing, something up?”

Eros sighed and his petunia petal eyes fluttered. “Comfort eating. I haven’t been able to come up with anything about where Psyche could be.”

Persephone echoed his sigh and reached out to lay her hand over his. “You’ll find her.”

“No.” Eros’ voice wavered romantically. “There is only ice cream for me now. Ice cream is my true love. Me and ice cream will be together forever, and it will be a beautiful and meaningful and rewarding relationship.” 

“Eros…”

“I never saw myself as the monogamous type, but ice cream and me just have such a connection, you know?”

“Oh, shush you. If you were that committed to ice cream, you’d have your own serving.”

“Ah, though I have given up other partners, ice cream isn’t ready to be tied down. She needs the relationship to be open on her side. And I respect that.” He reached out for another scoop from Persephone’s dish.

She batted at his hand. “You and ice cream need to have a very serious talk! And until then, I really think it’s better she stays with someone who appreciates her enough to demonstrate real commitment, like having her own bowl.”

Eros opened his mouth to respond when an arm slung around his shoulders and the scent of chilli peppers, tequila and lime buffeted his senses. 

“Toot toot! All aboard the Olympus dreamboat!” 

Eros jerked round and saw Hermes bending his face down to his level, a mask of red feathers and his swept-back scarlet hair giving him the look of a bird of paradise, sharpening his keen face and darkening his dazzling eyes.

Eros let a smile sneak out of the side of his mouth, lifting his upper lip. “What’s toot toot?” 

“It’s a foghorn, like what a boat has.” Hermes squeezed his shoulders with the loop of his arm.

“Did you say ‘all aboard’?” Persephone piped up. “As in like…” 

Hermes huffed. “Alright, this may shock both of you, but I don’t always think before I speak.” 

“That is shocking.” Eros chuckled.

Hermes relinquished Eros’ shoulders, Eros felt him trailing his fingertips along the diamante as he did so. Hermes’ palm-frond wings tucked in and his long legs folded as he collapsed to sit beside them. “So, how are you two enjoying the party?”

“Oh, Hermes, it’s spectacular!” Persephone beamed, patting his arm. 

Her hair was wound into two little buns on either side of her head, she looked like a pastry that had been shaped as a mouse. Hermes grinned at her. _She’s always cuter than I remember._

He turned to Eros, his light scent of some subtle, classy cologne and glace cherries still pleasantly tickling his tongue. “What about you, you handsome fella?”

Eros smiled graciously. “You’ve outdone yourself.”

“I was just thinking that.” Hermes tipped toward him with a wry smile. “But the heart of the party is beating softly tonight. All OK in Eros land?”

Eros drew back a little and rubbed the back of his neck. He knew when he first got into the secrets game it was going to be tough for him, he could be such an open book, at least to the right people, even masked it seemed. Hermes’ forelock dropped forward, brushing over his feather-framed, tiki torch eyes. He’d kept his tie fairly loose and the fine definition of his throat and collar was inked by shadow. Eros glanced at Persephone, but she was sucking on her teaspoon and not offering any particular reaction to the idea of Hermes being let into the circle. Ever since he’d decided to find Psyche, it had been getting harder and harder not to talk about her. When he’d lost her, she’d lingered like hot smoke in his lungs. When the idea of getting her back had settled in his heart, the smoke had started billowing up and threatening to come pluming from between his lips at any moment. If anyone was used to keeping secrets, it was a mailman, right?

“I was just talking to Perse about a thing I’m dealing with right now.” He said hesitantly.

Hermes cocked his head, his eyes wide and curious. 

Eros drummed his pink manicured nails on his broad thigh. He took a deep breath and the smoke stirred. “There’s this girl.” He said after a moment.

Hermes broke into a crescent moon grin. “Just one?”

“Not _just_ one.” Eros sighed. “ _The_ one.” His gaze lowered to his hand. “We had this amazing few days together, but then we had this big fight and she disappeared. I’m trying to find her, but no luck.”

Hermes looked at him inscrutably. His eyes dimmed and then sparked back alight. “Well, first of all, you’re clearly hiding something, because it is physically impossible for you to be in a fight.”

Eros rolled his eyes.

“And second of all, I’m sure I speak for both Perse and myself when I say we take it very personally that you’ve decided neither of us are your true love. Right, Perse?”

Persephone smoothed her bouffant skirt. “Don’t tease him, Hermes. It’s a real toughy.”

Hermes looked at Eros. His strong chin was tilted up to the lantern light and it trickled over the soft angles of his face, edible gold poured onto cupcake frosting. His adorable quiff had unravelled a little as if he’d run his hand through it and a few pink flicks shadowed his smooth brow. His feathers were like the streaks of cloud across the sunset, his eyes were pink sapphires and the black lace across them made Hermes’ skin prick pleasingly.

“Perse, would you mind if I borrowed this guy for a sec?”

Persephone blinked at him, glanced between them, then smiled. “Sure.”

Eros lowered his gaze to her and gave her a gentle smile, half way between tease and apology. “Hey, if you like, you could go hang out with the creepy old guy who's been asking me for a week if you were coming tonight.”

Persephone groaned dramatically and the butterfly wings of her mask flapped. “Fine, I'll go say hi to your dumb dad.” 

“He’s ticklish on his left side, if he bothers you.”

“You know that will only encourage him.”

Eros conceded that. She stood up, with a small wobble on her extremely high heels. Hermes caught her hip and let her steady herself on him. She waved a delicate hand, blew a pretty kiss and tottered off through the shimmer and stilt-walkers. The light from a fire juggler turned her flaring dress into a torn shred of burning paper floating from a chimney. 

Hermes dropped down to recline on his side, his lithe body a geometric puzzle of lines and angles, oddly hypnotic. The silk of his slim red tie glimmered. His smart clothes were far more tailored than what Eros was used to seeing him in. They made him look taller, they bound him and it only served to remind Eros of his wild energy.

Eros cleared his throat. “So, what’s up?”

Hermes leaned toward Eros on his elbow so his hair fell to one side and turned half the feathers of his mask black. His eyes glinted like hot coals from the darkness. “I’ve been thinking about how to make this party something special.”

Eros shook his head. “You’ve done an amazing job, Buddy. You should just let yourself enjoy it.”

“I’ll enjoy it more if I make it better.”

Eros felt a warm tingle on his cheeks. Hermes was leading up to something. He was no longer the cheery kid that brought your morning paper, he was the trickster tonight. Eros swallowed. “What did you have in mind?”

Hermes’ teeth emerged slowly and his dusky lip slipped between them. “What would you do, in my position?”

Eros raised his chin a little to look suspiciously down at the bundle of kindling grinning at him. “You know me, Hermes, I’m a bit of a one trick pony.”

Hermes’ voice husked, honeyed. “But it’s a damn good trick, isn’t it?”

Eros felt hot under his jacket. He faltered then laughed carefully. “Hermes, this is a perfectly nice party, it doesn't need my help.”

Hermes bolted upright on a straightened arm, his expression fizzing. “Nice? Nice? No party has ever gone down in history for being nice.”

“The best parties don't go down in history at all, no one can remember them in the morning.” Eros said.

Hermes snorted. “OK, fair.” He shifted his weight, he closed some of the distance between them and Eros caught his spiced, citrus tang again. “So, come on.” Hermes urged. “Help me make this a night to forget. Help me submerge this tangled, thorned, thicket of over-complication and hesitation in the bliss of chaos and the chaos of bliss.”

Eros tasted the request with a flick of his tongue behind his teeth. It was sweet, rich, sharp, orange peel and dark chocolate.

Hermes reached out and tucked his fore knuckle under Eros’ chin, tickling the supple skin under his jaw and stirring something in his abdomen. 

“Pretty please, Strawberry Shortcake?”

Eros scoffed and jerked his face free. “That's a new one.”

Hermes frowned quizzically. “It's not, is it? I'm sure I've called you that before.”

“Have you?”

“Yeah.” Hermes shrugged and ran his fingers through his hair, opening his torso, pulling at the buttons of his shirt so they winked open in a dozen little red windows. “I call everyone in your family after dessert. You know, because you're all so sweet.” He started to count off on his fingers. “You're Strawberry Shortcake. Aphrodite is Parma Violet, or Lavender Cake. Ares is Custard Tart, Cheesecake, Trifle, Tropical Sundae, Whipped Cream, because, you know, the hair, and also because he's whipped…”

Eros scrunched and held up a pleading hand. “Pro seduction tip, Hermes, don't allude to your sexual history with your target's parents.”

Hermes laughed musically and nodded. “OK, ignore that.” He fixed his eyes on Eros. “Just focus on how much better this party would be if all those desperate urges weren't clogging up the atmosphere.”

Eros knew Hermes was well aware of how keenly he felt it when people were holding back on what they wanted. For all they were outwardly very different, they shared that core trait: pent up desire could play them like violins. For Hermes, it was the desire to let loose, cause trouble, break the rules. For Eros it was the desire for touch, for pleasure, for surrender, for devouring. An atmosphere like this turned them both into an orchestra. Eros was starting to feel the overture strumming his spine, crescendoing in response to the echo in the god at his side. If they opened themselves to it, if they let themselves harmonise… 

He pushed the thought back. He rolled his shoulders in the hot casing of his jacket. “How am I the god of sexual desire and you're still the randiest guy here?”

Hermes mimed pinging a bell. “Ding ding! Olympus bike, Baby!”

Eros laughed, then checked himself. “Obviously, no slut-shaming.” He said sincerely. “I love your liberation and respect your autonomy.”

“Thanks, Man, I appreciate it.” Hermes spun on his ass and sat cross-legged, facing Eros with a magnesium-flare grin. “But, for real, don't you have just a little itch to stuff this big oil soaked rag of a group into the vodka bottle of my party planning skills, set it on fire with the cigarette lighter of your extreme sexiness, and throw it through the window of the government offices of social rules like the Molotov cocktail it longs to be?”

Eros raised an eyebrow. “You're on a real metaphor high this evening.”

“Just answer me honestly.”

Eros huffed out, his broad chest bouncing and jostling his hibiscus button-hole. “It feels unethical.”

Hermes waved that away. “It wouldn't be forcing anyone. There's so much potential energy in the air tonight, can't you feel it?” He flexed his long fingers. “Electricity seeking earth.”

A chord chimed between Eros’ thighs. “I'll admit everyone here is hornier than a bonobo.”

“Exactly!” Hermes threw his hand up. “We'd just be putting the last piece in the puzzle.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice, shadow dipped into the dimple in the corner of his mouth. “Isn't it making you hot? That missing piece?”

He brushed Eros’ hand. His fingers were warm. Eros looked down at them, his mouth going dry. “Hermes…”

Hermes lifted his other hand and rested it lightly on Eros’ knee. He played a little on the bone then let his fingers drift a fraction along and down to the very lowest part of Eros’ inner thigh. The hand on Eros’ hand subtly interlaced their fingers. 

Eros’ pulse quickened. He gave Hermes a reproachful look that he knew wasn’t convincing. His words came out halting, snagging reluctantly in the back of his throat. “Hermes, I've been… trying to… be more prudent with my powers… and my… exploits.”

Hermes’ eyes pricked him like pins. “Because of this girl?”

“Yes.”

“I suspect she fell for your powers. And your exploits.”

“I…” Eros lost his train of thought. Hermes had shifted closer. The lantern light glistened on the angles of his cheekbones and his collar and the length of his neck, like he’d bathed in honey and it was dripping off him. Eros’ tongue moved in his mouth. He flicked it back under control and released some of the heat building in his chest with a low laugh. “You know this isn't fair, I'm famously easy to seduce.”

Hermes smiled. “And I'm famously good at seduction.”

“What a pair we make.”

“Always have.”

They held each other’s gaze a moment. A harpy swooped through a shaft of moonlight and breathed a jet of blue flame over the heads of a small crowd of guests, to gasps and applause. The blue blaze dashed stark, mesmerising light across the pair, their masks standing out, turning them into idols. Eros’ wings cast a vast, fanning shadow that bled into the branches of the apple tree, changing him into a bright, beating heart connected in a network of arteries to the vibrant, thriving woodland. Hermes was framed by the torrent of dancing and drinking and gambling, circus acts and billowing fabric and stumbling, giggling chases, as if it was all flowing from his wild hair.

Hermes shifted another inch closer. He spoke in almost a whisper but Eros heard every word exactly. “Eros, I think it's really beautiful that you've found love. No one deserves it more than you. But you of all people know we don't fall in love with the steady and the sublime. That just keeps us in safe packaging. We fall in love with the raw and the wild and the hungry.” He teased that spot just past his knee in small, soft circles. “I'm not asking you to go against your lover. I'm suggesting that, as your friend, I can help you keep the flame burning that your little moth couldn't resist.” 

Eros took a deep breath of the party air. It didn’t clear his head, it muddled it with the sharp, dizzying scents of tequila and vodka and the sweetness of sugar syrups. He gazed out at the tumult of swirling, sparkling colour. He gazed up at the spray of stars, turning the darkness of night into a mirage of brightness and merriment. He looked back at Hermes and the galactic reflections in his pupils. “The bliss of chaos and the chaos of bliss, huh?”

“Uhuh.” Hermes bit his lip and squeezed their interlaced fingers.

Eros stroked his thumb over Hermes’ hand. He took one more drugging breath, the delicious air flowing over his tongue. He spoke almost without meaning to. “Alright. I'll do it.”

Hermes’ face shattered into a beaming grin like a white falcon bursting through stained glass.

Eros felt something shift within himself, the music that had been stirring in him struck up with zeal. He turned his hand in Hermes’, stroking their palms together, and grasped it, standing and pulling him up with him. Hermes hiccuped in surprise as Eros tugged him sharply against his body, keeping his hand caged and looming over him a little, drawing himself up to those inches he had on Hermes’ height and shrugging his shoulders and curling his wings forward a little to shadow Hermes’ lithe body in his soft, broad shadow. “But, I'll need some warming up first.” He said in a low rumble.

Hermes chuckled. His wings fluttered and Eros felt his tongue unstill again as Hermes bobbed up a fraction on his toes and nudged his nose to Eros’ with a mischievous “Oh yeah?”

Eros drew his lower lip into his mouth and let it bloom back, pink and glistening. 

He stepped back and pulled Hermes into the trees.

They tripped through the wildflowers, weaving in and out of light and darkness. The din of the party dimmed to a background bubbling. Hermes’ hand was hot and restless in Eros’, a furnace igniting in the dip between their palms. Hermes felt laughter leaping in his chest and snakes waking in his stomach and slithering down his legs. His controlled eagerness started to unspool into excitement. Eros’ wings streaked through the shadow and made him feel like he was flying above the atmosphere. 

They raced until the party became a flickering zoetrope through the black and silver trees. Eros pulled Hermes softly to his front. Nothing was ever rough with him, he was persuasion incarnate, he could lift you and drift you and ripple you, easy as an ostrich feather. He moved Hermes gently back against a copper beech, the leaves red like his hair. He laid one hand on Hermes’ waist, pressing him into the bark just enough to make him wriggle. The other hand he cupped lightly round Hermes’ chin and tilted it up so he could search his face. In the darkness, Hermes’ eyes glinted garnet, Eros’ glowed ruby.

“You’re different.” Eros said steadily.

Hermes shrugged and smiled. “It’s a masquerade.”

“No.” Eros murmured. “You’re different. You’re not our cute little bird tonight. You’re doing something.”

Hermes hooked Eros’ belt loops and pulled him in. “I’m just trying to have a little fun.”

“You’re playing with us all, aren’t you?”

“Would that be so bad?”

Eros sighed and ran his thumb along Hermes’ jaw. “For all my vices, Hermes, I try to keep things honest.”

“Don’t think of it as a trick, think of it as the groundwork for a surprise.” Hermes widened his eyes playfully on the word, tilting his hips to rub his swell lightly against where Eros was thickening. “You like surprises. Right, Eros?”

Eros felt his body tighten and prickle. “You scare me when you get like this.”

Hermes’ fingertips stole along Eros’ belt, skating on the smooth leather until his hands were at the small of his back. “That’s not fear, that’s something else.” He clutched Eros’ ass and grinned at his sharp intake of breath. “Let me show you.” He wrenched Eros against him.

They connected hard at the mouth and the crotch. Eros’ brow and knees buckled and he collapsed against Hermes, letting his softness pad to Hermes’ firm body. His lips parted and covered Hermes’ devilish smile, his restless tongue hooked Hermes’ and he sighed in relief at finally tasting the maddening lime and agave nectar flavour that had been floating on the air between them. The fingers cupping Hermes’ chin ran down his throat to his ribs under his jacket, and he clutched the writhing, red god between his large hands, feeling him move like a needy cat in the confines of his grip and his body. Their kiss was fire and water. Hermes panted and flickered his tongue and snatched with his lips, Eros matched his greed and subdued it, moulding Hermes’ mouth and pressing it slower and indulgent in an irresistible current.

Hermes dug his grip into Eros’ ass, making Eros thrust forward so they both moaned harshly. Eros stumbled and planted his palms to the tree, driving Hermes back against it and catching his breath as he stroked kisses just under the rim of Hermes’ feathered mask, which tickled his lips. He smiled against Hermes’ cheek. 

Hermes nicked Eros’ jaw with his fine teeth and drew his hands to the front of Eros’ jacket, pulling him even closer. Eros was like a blanket you buried yourself under to hide from the world. Hermes submerged himself in his body, letting all existence momentarily become the taste of vanilla and cherries and the scent of cologne and the haze of pink feathers. They kissed feverishly again and his fingers began to dance on the gem buttons of Eros’ jacket, then on his tie, then his shirt.

_You want warming up, Strawberry Shortcake? I can do that._

He split open Eros’ clothing like he was shelling peas, the smooth, tender flesh of Eros’ body exposed like the vulnerable, pink creature in a clam shell. Hermes smiled at his soft lines of muscle under that pretty layer of fat. He laid his hands slowly onto Eros’ bare chest, Eros breathing in and rising into his touch. He found the supple skin of his nipples and circled. Eros made a high, strained sound in his throat and caught Hermes’ face in his hands and kissed him dizzy, the cradle round his jaw the only thing keeping Hermes standing. He laughed low and wicked into Eros’ hot, giving mouth.

Eros was roasting. He felt like the yoke in a boiling eggshell. Hermes’ touch was so hot it was almost corrosive, but he craved it, he could feel the primal in himself, the animal he kept restrained with all his care and attentiveness and good judgement, breaking its bonds. He folded his arms back and let Hermes push his jacket away, both of them laughing into each other’s mouths as it tangled in his wings and he had to flap and shimmy it away. He cast it into the grass and met Hermes’ blazing eyes behind his mask, as he swished his wings wide again and tenderly ran his fingers into Hermes’ hair, letting them tangle in the knots. Their shared laughter was a river rapid in his chest. He brought those pepper red lips eagerly back to his. He kissed Hermes softly, quelling his wriggling, allowing himself a little popping feeling of pride as he felt Hermes’ body calm and fall into rhythm with his kiss. He could sense his pulse, a summer gale of desire whipping around Eros’ body and sending a thrill through him. Eros slid his knee forward and pinned Hermes to the tree, lining his cock to Hermes’ and making him catch a breathless moan between his teeth. 

He kept pressing kisses to him, their lips stroking with the friction of velvet on raw silk. He teased the sensitivity over Hermes’ jugular with his fingertips as he slowly dropped his hands from his hair and to his jacket. He didn’t wrestle impatiently like Hermes did. He unbuttoned it softly, easing it from Hermes’ caged shoulders and stroking up and down the shapely muscles in his arms. He tickled him a little and flicked his tongue with his as he undid the scarlet tie, drawing it along the back of Hermes’ neck as he pulled it away, chuckling at the slink in Hermes’ spine. He worked the buttons of Hermes’ shirt slowly. One. Stroke. Tickle. Two. Stroke. Tease. Three. Pinch. Slower. Four… 

Hermes broke from his mouth with a snuffling whine. Eros gurgled with laughter as Hermes snapped his teeth and fought with his fingers to undress faster. The shirt went rippling through the air and Hermes grabbed the trail of Eros’ tie lying around his collar and yanked him into a hard kiss, nibbling his lips almost sore. Eros’ wings bristled and his blood rushed. With a flash of heat at his core, he pulled Hermes from the tree, swung him round, and threw him to the ground. Hermes landed on his back, propped on his elbows with his legs crooked and spread, his chest bobbing up and down with rough, rapid breath, his trousers tight on his cock. He glared like a candle. He flicked his tongue like a cobra. Eros gazed at the hard, rosehip flesh of his bare torso, the slightest mist of sweat starting to bloom on his chest, scenting the air. Eros sucked on the lime and agave taste now coating his tongue. A gold armband gleamed on Hermes’ bicep, biting into the flexed muscle. He’d been planning this from before the party even started, he’d dressed prepared to be undressed. Eros smiled. 

_Let’s remind you which of us is the god of seduction._

He dived.

Hermes heard his own moan rip the air as Eros avalanched warmth and pressure and sweetness onto him. He tossed his head back, his hair flying and his brain reeling. He wrapped Eros’ snow leopard body in his arms and held him close and arched his back to crush their bare torsos together. Skin on skin set him on fire, Eros’ open shirt fluttered on his flanks. He bit Eros’ ear and gasped and giggled as Eros slapped his thigh in reprimand. Eros had a gunboat kind of strength, slow but heavy and unrelenting. He clamped Hermes in his arms and swept his wings around them so that they were completely enclosed, a rosy light falling on their faces through the feathers. Eros caught his eye and held it. Those twin rubies in black lace like the neon lights of a strip club through the smoke of a city, tempting and taboo. Hermes couldn’t look away. He fell fully still, for the first time tonight. He wet his lip. His breath was coming with a tremor. His heart and his abdomen and his cock ached. Eros traced a hand down his body, teasing his nipple maddeningly with his thumb, then gliding along his abs and round to cup his ass, then back up over his thigh. He gripped sternly and pulled Hermes’ thigh up, hooking it over his hip. Hermes’ cock swelled against taut fabric. Eros began to rock. 

Just gently, just a little. 

Hermes could feel his size, his hardness, the way he moved his pelvis with careful, rhythmic insistence. Pulses of need began to ripple up his spine. Eros finally released him from his hypnotic eyes, sinking down past Hermes’ cheek. His lips opened on his neck. His tongue silked over his skin. Hermes groaned in desperation and delight. Eros chuckled into his ear, kissed it, then fell to his throat like he was eating venison. Hermes shivered apart. Eros ground on his cock, and teased and caressed and sucked and grazed his throat until every pore felt like a lit wick. He sighed against Hermes’ skin and held him trapped. He slowly, gently, firmly stoked him from a flame to a bonfire. Hermes gasped for breath. His mind began to whirl with images of what was to come, what they could do together with this party, what they could do together here in the shadows. His bare back scuffed and settled in the warm earth. He peeked through a gap in Eros’ feathers and saw the firmament in a swirl of soft pink. The stars were intensely bright through the spindly branches, fireflies caught in a net, swarming, teaming. 

_We’re all under the same sky._

He smiled up at them, then let his eyes roll back into his head, whispering low in Eros’ ear. “Oh yeah… Fuck, you're so good at that. Oh my gods…”

And then he was cold.

Eros slid off him and stood, dusting off his sleeves and smoothing his hair, his wings folding neatly back. Hermes started and gawked up at him, scrambling to prop himself up again.

“Wh… what?” He stammered.

Eros flashed him an infuriatingly smug smile. “OK, I'm ready.”

Hermes groaned in his throat and smiled ruefully. “Or, you know, we could just keep doing this.”

Eros flexed his shoulders and neck. “Patience.”

Hermes’ cock pulsed irritably. “Not my strong suit.”

Eros dropped to one knee and leaned over him with a coil of candyfloss hair falling roguishly over his mask. “It'll be worth it.” He husked. “I thought you wanted a surprise.” 

Hermes stuck out his tongue. Eros laughed and kissed his forehead, leaving a tingling print on his enlivened skin. He stood, smiled wide, and walked away.

Hermes stared after him as he vanished into the shadows, his round, taut ass especially sexy from this angle. He flopped back into the grass and gazed at the stars, twinkling like they were mocking him. He blew his fringe out of his eyes. “I'm such a damn mess for that guy.”

Eros wandered back to the party. His flesh was awake and alert and harmonised. His wings stirred, ready for flight, his heart beat steady and urgent. The taste and scent and feel of Hermes echoed in his body. The memory of Psyche coursed in his blood. He rolled his shoulders, spread his wings, and took off into the air.

He soared up above the crowd, higher and higher until he could look down and see the whole party. He hovered and looked around methodically. 

Perse was with his parents, best to avoid the mental image but he trusted them to take care of her well. He blew his mother a kiss and saw her shoulders relax. 

Hecate was lounging sophisticatedly as she told some story full of quips and cleverness, Athena and Artemis were engrossed in it. He rotated his fingertips. _Just heat that up a tad._ They all burst into laughter in unison and dropped their heads together conspiratorially. 

His grandparents kept glancing at each other when the other wasn’t looking. He moved his finger and thumb together. Their eyes met.

Poseidon was a hit with that crowd of nymphs and Amphitrite was enjoying his energy. He smiled at them. Poseidon and Amphitrite kissed and the nymphs sucked their lips.

That harpy couldn’t stop swooping near that centaur. Those two nymphs had clearly been staring across the bar at each other all evening, while that cyclops looked like he was glued to the bar-tender’s mixology displays. He fluttered his hand at them all, they ducked closer in. 

Daphne was looking bored and uncomfortable as Apollo slumped beside her on his phone. Eros felt a flash of anger. He flicked his fingers sharply. Apollo twitched, blinked, said something to Daphne and walked away as she watched, perplexed. _That’s better._

The stilt-walkers definitely wouldn’t be compatible with anyone else, on a practical level. _Just nudge you into each other’s eye-line._

A pretty nymph who looked a little like a pumpkin and a barrel-chested satyr were both at loose ends. He put his palms together. They wandered to one of the dessert tables.

He floated his hand and the music turned up a fraction, the bass thrumming through the ground. The dancers sank into it. He stirred the scents of alcohol and sugar and perfume stronger. He placed his finger to his lips and the lanterns dimmed. A low murmur of curiosity went through the crowd.

_Perfect._

He tugged his sleeves straight and wafted his wings back. He drew himself tall and, with a motion like a cello player, his bow was gleaming in his hand. He settled into the familiar, satisfying grip, let his muscles fall into position. He pulled the string back to his mask, his fingertip brushing the lace. 

He fired.

Ampelus wandered through the party, twisting her hair absent-mindedly in her hands, too nervous to talk to anyone, but too enthralled to leave.

And then she saw him.

He rose overhead like an arcing arrow and, at his zenith, his great, vibrant wings spread and streamed in the indigo like a painter had dashed pink across the heavens. He glowed from within. He was rose quartz, he was ruby, he was rhodonite. He was the colour that she imagined Gaia herself would bleed, he was the essence of nature. His body hung gracefully with his toes in a tulip point and his hair ruffled by the breeze. Even in this strange grandeur, he was softness itself. Her heart felt wrapped in wire, constricted and filled with a cutting pain. He was so monstrously, exquisitely beautiful. 

He flourished and suddenly he was holding a bright, golden bow. As he drew it, his whole body fell into perfect alignment, as if he was made of poetry. A long, blazing pink arrow cast his gentle face into stark, strong contrast. 

He fired.

A firework shot through the air and exploded over the party. Stars and comet trails of flamingo, fuchsia and bubblegum rained through the air. He fired again and fizzing, wheeling sparkles filled the sky. Guests gasped and clapped and laughed. Dazzling, shimmering, hot, sweet light descended onto the party. Ampelus gazed in awe as she saw it settle among the crowds, not dissipating, but hovering like dragonflies, the sparkles multiplied a hundred times by the reflections in a hundred mesmerised, dilating pupils. Every eye was possessed by a pink glimmer. Every face flushed with it. Lips parted, hands stroked up opening arms and tilting torsos, teeth emerged in soft, stealthy grins, bodies began to drift and sway and sink. Pairs and groups, lovers and strangers melted together. Humidity rose from their bodies, laughter turned into soft sighs.

And over the simmering lake of awakening lust and adoration and taking chances, through the mist of glittering magenta, his wings crowning the sky, his eyes alive and temptingly unsettling. 

Eros. 

Her Eros.

She gazed up at him with her eyes and her mouth and her blood filling with his wonderful, intoxicating enchantment. And she whispered the words that had tortured her for all these days both an inch and a world apart from him.

_I love you._


	2. Fairy Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A menu of the orgy chapters. Sorry, there's no wine list.
> 
> Song: [I Put a Spell on You, Annie Lennox.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TrSMaOZm3Y)

This is a long night for the Olympians. So, rather than dump over 20,000 words on you like a lunatic, here's a menu of the groups you can visit as you wander around the park!

**Totally** Persephone, Ares, Aphrodite and a pole-dancing nymph. Dancing, getting friendly, heating up.

 **Woodland Creatures** Hecate, Artemis and Athena. Relaxing, seducing, starting to let go.

 **Poacher** Hermes reels in Daphne and Ampelus, (some discussion of his and Daphne's relationships with Apollo).

 **Merfolk** Poseidon, Amphitrite, and a bunch of naughty river nymphs. We just drown that sea-king.

 **Liquid Courage** Zeus and Hera. Maybe this time...

 **Death and the Maiden** We return to Persephone's group and play a little more, treating Ares like he goddamn deserves. Hades arrives and he and Persephone explore each other for the first time.

 **Falconer** Hermes lures Eros into his group. It takes very little persuasion.

 **In the Air Tonight** A scenic tour of the party, revisiting the groups and picking up where we left off as things get wetter and wilder.

 **Bliss and Chaos** Hermes, Eros, Daphne and Ampelus, and a very messy picnic blanket.


	3. Fairy Lights: Totally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Persephone, Ares, Aphrodite and a pole-dancing nymph. Dancing, getting friendly, heating up.

Persephone’s eyes were dazzled with warm, sugary light as pink sparks from the fireworks fell like snow and drifted in the air, turning her into a strawberry floating in pink champagne. They flurried around the sky blue nymph dancing on the platform and she flung them into an eddying swirl of glitter as she hooked the pole with one arm and leg, lifted herself from the floor and spun with her other limbs stretched out in long streaks of glistening turquoise. She twirled round and round the pole with her head thrown back in ecstasy and her body taut and symphonic in its grace. Persephone’s mouth fell open. Aphrodite whisked around, her skin glowing like sculpted glass in the firework fairy lights. Her eyes were a pair of almost blinding neon pink lamps through the almond holes in her dark purple fox mask.

“I’m getting up there!” She announced, drumming her palms excitedly on Ares’ chest.

He laughed and batted her beats away, catching her hand. “Yeah? You gonna show us what you got?”

“Yes, I am.” She shimmied and even through his mask his eyes visibly darted around the quiver through her body.

“OK, Player, let’s see it.”

He hoisted her up onto the platform, about at the height of his chest, as her giggling skimmed along the air. Her cascade of lavender hair tumbled in his face and his shirt strained on the swell of his bicep as he lifted her. They kissed, smiling. Persephone ducked behind her strawberry daiquiri, trying to be stealthy, unable, no, unwilling to look away. She watched the way Ares’ mouth moved when he kissed, the way the goddess of love herself guzzled at his affection like a pig hunting for truffles. He was a good kisser… Her mind wandered back to that day… 

_“Do you wanna make out?”_ Ugh, he was such a child. 

_“Like kiss?”_

_“Yeah, totally.”_

“Yeah, totally?” What did Aphrodite see in him? He wasn’t romantic, he was a liar, he was dumber than a house brick. Those big, stupid arms were probably draining all the blood from his brain. 

_I guess he offered to kill people for me that time, that was pretty nice, definitely pocket that._

Ares pushed Aphrodite off him onto the platform and she bobbed up to stand, poking her tongue out. He gnashed his teeth at her and laughed with a rough, bounding sound that struck Persephone in the stomach, throwing a smile onto her face without warning. 

Ares took a step back and folded his arms and a buttercup smile glimmered on his lips as he watched Aphrodite toss her hair, lock the eyes of the nymph and strut towards her. Persephone eyed his lips. He was smiling the way a teddy bear smiles at a picnic. The sweetness, the genuine, pure happiness threw Persephone more off-balance than any of his flirty faces and suggestive comments. 

_He really loves her. Gods, what does that feel like?_

She thought about the way he had cradled her in his hands as they’d kissed. He’d lied to her, it was utterly unacceptable and she knew that. But, he hadn’t pushed her, he hadn’t touched her once without permission, he’d always asked to move closer, to take the next step. And as he’d kissed her, he’d moved carefully, slowly. It didn’t feel like he was taking her kisses from her, to press and preserve and gloat over, or else toss away once used and wrung out. It felt like he was inviting her to join him, like he wanted to meet her, like he thought they could create something new between their lips if they just closed their eyes and forgot themselves in it. She sucked on her lip. The bubblegum glimmers glanced off the smooth curve of Ares’ mouth and the slope of his white shirt over his shoulders. He was hard-bodied, but he wasn’t angular, there was a roundness to him, a softness. Just like there was to his kiss… 

_Stop it! Why are you dwelling on this?_

Ares glanced sideways and his eyes shone red from his red hound mask. His teeth emerged from his smile.

“Whatcha looking at, Cupcake?”

“Nothing.” Persephone turned her nose up haughtily. 

Ares chuckled like a tiger at a doe. “Wanna come over here and teach me some more of the alphabet?”

Persephone put her hand on her hip and pursed her lips so tight that her cheeks sucked in.

“Come on.” Ares unfolded his arms and beckoned her with a lazy scooping motion. “Don’t look like a fish, it’s a party.”

Persephone sucked determinedly on her cheeks to keep from smiling at him. She shielded her body with one arm across her middle and went to his side. She caught his cologne, something oaky and warm and too young for him. 

Ares smirked down at her tight pucker. “It’s OK, you know, you can smile. I won’t read into it. I know my smile is infectious.” 

“So is the flu.” Persephone grumbled.

Ares laughed his musket-fire laugh again. It snapped Persephone’s tension and she beamed. Her butterfly mask fluttered lightly and tickled her cheeks. Ares grinned sincerely, his mirth blowing away the webbing of mockery around his mouth.

“You look pretty tonight.” He said.

“Thank you.” Persephone patted one of her hair buns a little self-consciously and glanced away, her face warm.

“Do I look pretty?”

She shrugged coyly. “About the same as you do in your grey track pants.”

Ares crossed his arms again, framing his square chest, his golden skin a candleglow under his collar. “Well, I look fucking hot in the grey track pants. It’s like if a sleepy panther and that guy everyone checks out at the gym had a sexy baby.”

He said it as Persephone was taking a sip of her drink, it shot up her nose as she burst out laughing and she doubled over in a violent coughing fit. 

Ares cackled like a gremlin and clapped her hard on the back repeatedly so her spine reverberated and her drink splashed onto her fingers. 

“That’s…! Not…! Helping…!” She sputtered.

Ares thumped her once more and she gasped for breath and straightened up, sucking the cocktail droplets off her fingers. His hand lingered on her back. She glanced up at him with her pouting, glossy lips closed softly around her index. 

He moved his tongue along his back teeth and narrowed his eyes. “OK, you have got to be doing that on purpose.”

Persephone flicked her glance cross-eyed down to her finger. She popped it out of her mouth and gave him a deriding look. “You’re gross.”

“You’re doing a sucking thing right under my nose! I’m only a man!”

Persephone batted her hand dismissively at him and he shook his head, put his hands in his pockets and turned back to the platform, the laughter still tucked into the corner of his mouth. Persephone took another popsicle-flavoured sip and smiled subtly at him. Maybe he was just absolutely the worst, but parties like this were way out of her comfort zone, and with her friends distracted and Hades AWOL, she had felt oddly safe with Ares and Aphrodite for the evening. They moved so easily around each other, they mellowed each other, they made it feel like nothing was expected of you except to make sure you enjoyed yourself. They didn’t mind how you did that, as long as you didn’t mind them. It was sort of like hanging out with cats. She could be honest with them, she could say no, she could say she didn’t like something or didn’t know something or didn’t want something, and they would accept it. Without question. Without even batting an eye. She shuffled a half-step closer to Ares. Her dress was strapless and his warmth trickled over her bare skin like she was standing next to a hearth. Hearths were a special kind of fire, you could get close and drop your guard and they wouldn’t burn you.

_Why do I trust you?_

“OK, Sunbeam, turn those hot rays on me!” Aphrodite called from the platform. 

Ares bit his lip with devilish glee and rolled his shoulders back and thrust his chin to make a show of staring up at her. Persephone followed his eyes and her mouth went slack. Aphrodite towered over them, violet satin pouring down her body like wine, a long, sculpted leg angled out of the deep slit up her dress and her hands bunched into her gushing hair, her sorbet-scoop curves drizzled in magenta shadow like raspberry sauce. The nymph stole behind her in striking silver heels. Her eyes were dreamy, glowing hot pink out of her cool blue face, her sapphire curls tumbling over one glittering shoulder. She lifted fine fingers to the straps of Aphrodite’s dress. Aphrodite lowered her arms and the nymph moved with her, unhooking the straps and stroking down her skin. The satin ran down Aphrodite’s body and pooled at her feet, unveiling her hourglass form, inked with violet lace and the thin ribbons of her lingerie. Persephone’s stomach somersaulted. Beside her, she felt Ares tense. 

Aphrodite stepped out of the satin puddle and she and the nymph joined hands and sashayed in slow motion to the pole. The nymph slid her toe around its base and swung in a rhythmic step, holding Aphrodite’s eye. Aphrodite returned her daring, desiring gaze, stretched both hands out to clasp the pole and rotated her hips wide and slow. The nymph answered with a sink to her knees, spreading her thighs tauntingly and tossing her hair like a waterfall. Aphrodite smiled and slinked around the pole, wrapping it, hoisting herself off the ground and collapsing back into the air so she hung upside-down like a vampire bat, her arms spreading like wings. Persephone gaped. The pink light seemed to be emanating from within her. She closed her eyes and they only glowed dimmer. Her abs rose through the padding on her belly as she folded up, grasped the pole and spun round it back down to earth, making Persephone dizzy. Ares touched the backs of his fingers to Persephone’s arm and steadied her. 

Aphrodite stepped back and waved to the nymph. The nymph grinned with needle teeth and a flick of the fins at her ears. She sprang onto the pole and whirled around it with her legs spread. Aphrodite giggled and leaped forward and caught her, the nymph closing her legs about her waist and their eyes flaring flamingo. Aphrodite dropped her and they both prowled around the pole, holding each other’s scorching gaze, their feet brushing. The music rose. It cascaded over them and swept them into a whirlpool. They began to dance as if they were a single body, posing and twirling around the pole in graceful, controlled falls and rises. They mirrored each other, challenged each other. 

Persephone’s grip trembled on her glass and shook tiny bubbles into the cocktail. The captivating pair hung from their ankles with their muscles smeared in watercolour shadows. They cartwheeled down the length and revolved like carousel creatures in flashing lights. They swept and soared and split their legs, swung and swished and strutted, suspended in time, and slithered on the floor. The fairy lights whipped into orbit around them so they became the centre of their own solar system. They curled and craned and contorted and every new, exaggerated shape drew Persephone’s eye to another detail of their bodies. They were laced with sweat and shimmer, their hair streamed, their mouths slick with sly smiles.

“Incredible, isn’t she?”

Persephone started and snapped her hanging jaw shut. She looked sideways with a blush under the tips of the butterfly wings and saw Ares was gazing up at the platform, as if in prayer. 

Persephone felt a flutter of warmth in her belly. “Wonderful.”

The light sank into Ares’ face, tinting it rose gold. He spoke distantly, dreamily. “Sometimes we get lucky, Perse. It really does happen.”

Persephone beamed at him. She sipped her drink and the fresh sweetness made her tongue wriggle a little in her mouth. She glanced down at the way his shirt lay over his torso. 

“Gods knows how it happened for me. What a fucking woman. What does she see in me?”

Persephone sipped again. “I think I’m starting to get it.” She said it more to herself than him, unsure if he even heard her over the music.

Ares angled his head and peeked down at her from the slits in his mask.

“Hey.” He said, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Wanna dance?”

Persephone’s stomach flipped again. She knocked back another strawberry shot for courage. “Yes.”

He grinned. He took her drink from her hand, his fingertips brushing hers, and leaned close to her to reach round and place it on the table. He scooped up her hands. His hands were a little rough, but they were warm and sure and gentle. He was a clumsy dancer. His bulk wouldn’t cooperate with the oozing bump and grind of the music. But he smiled, and his hands covered hers like mittens, and his curls bobbed about on his brow like sea foam, and his scent was autumnal and sleepy, and Persephone was swaying and then stepping and then spinning and the dance carried her away from everything she had ever been scared of in all her life. They weaved in Aphrodite’s shadow, Ares like a golden retriever splashing happily about in a pool. Persephone kept laughing, hiccuping with it, glowing with it, brighter than the pink fireworks. 

Ares laughed too, he passed her between his huge hands and steered her along the surging, thrumming current of the music, like a boy with a paper boat on a river. When she was dizzy and delighted and everything around them was tumbling sparkle, he gave into himself and pulled her in a tight, rapid spin into his arms. 

She squeaked and thumped against his chest. A resounding note hummed up her body from her core as she was enveloped in his heat. She blinked up at him. His eyes smouldered, she could swear she could see a wisp of smoke leaking from the holes in the mask. Her face flushed and she clenched between her legs.

She struck out with her little gloved hand and frantically tickled his left side.

Nothing happened.

She swallowed nervously. “Sugar snaps…”

Ares grinned and she felt his hands squeeze her back. “What was that?”

Persephone wrinkled her nose. “Eros said, if you tried anything, you were ticklish on your left side.”

“Eros doesn't know his left from right.”

Persephone prickled at the mocking tone about her friend. “Do you?”

“Yes!” Ares snorted indignantly.

“Sure.” She pursed her lips. Then she squeaked again as he hoisted her a little in his hold so her breasts bunched on his abs.

“So, you're into tickling?” His voice was spiced honey.

Persephone keenly thanked the mask, she knew she must be the colour of fresh red apples. “What? No!”

His teeth crept out like a shark’s.

“Ares...? ARES! NO!”

His fingers flashed around her middle mercilessly. She was gripped by spasms as he tickled her like hammering rainfall and cackled maniacally at her screeching, reeling laughter. Her own mirth pummelled her stomach, her eyes splashed with tears as she flailed and flapped like a ribbon caught in a high wind. His hands turned rougher and he started to pluck at her skirts and claw at her side. As all the resistance was chased from her body, he grabbed her, pulled her to him and swept her up in his arms. Persephone felt her feet leave the floor and her heart flew with them, the laughter still eddying through her and turning her into a stream of bubbles. Afraid she might burst into butterflies, she flung her legs around Ares’ waist and clasped her hands at the back of his neck, and clung to him like a koala. Her skirts ruffled up at the tops of her thighs and her bare skin heated against his body. She met his eyes, possessed pink and blazing. 

His breath came short, his chest nudging hers in rapid rises. “You seem a little into tickling.”

“I am not.”

“Then why don't you tell me what you do like?”

Gods, he smelled good. What was it about that dumb teenage cologne? His mouth was really, really close now. He had this way of jutting his lower lip out, like lemon peel, you know it’s bad for you but you just want to bite it so bad. Maybe that kiss had been ill-gotten gains, but it had been a darn good kiss. Maybe another one wouldn’t hurt. Or two. Or, you know, whatever…

Her lips parted and her fingers stirred on the back of his neck. She murmured to him and it hovered between them, cocooned from the pounding music by the heat rising around their entwined bodies. “Do you wanna make out?”

The snout of Ares’ mask bumped the upturn of her nose. “Like kiss?”

She bumped him back. “Yeah, totally.”

He smiled. 

She sank to his lips like a cookie into milk. 

The relief almost broke her. She collapsed into the press of his mouth, the soft snaking of his tongue, the way his hands curled on her back, one teasing up and down her spine, one sliding to cup her ass and hold her up, squeezing her flesh like he was gently testing the ripeness of a peach. Their kiss wavered between easy and cloying. Their lips padded to each other lightly as they smiled, then locked and explored. Persephone gave herself to it, all her anxiety and pain and longing and doubt, all the knots in her veins that she had lived with for days. At last, even for just this long, indulgent, otherworld moment, she was unravelling. 

_Well, if anyone would know how to make you surrender, it would be a war god…_

Aphrodite and the nymph whirled like ash keys and landed with their legs braided together and their fingers interlaced on the pole.

Ares wrapped Persephone tighter. His breathing fractured as he reluctantly pulled half his mouth away from hers to snatch some air and she wrenched him back in, plastering herself against his body and feeling her blood thud indignantly at the cotton and taffeta barring her from his effervescent heat and the texture of his skin. She ran her fingers into his hair and tangled in his curls. He gripped her ass hard and her clit pushed against his sternum and she gasped. 

He chuckled against her lips. “Gods, you’re hot.”

“Uhuh.” Excitement began to ping about her like she was a pinball machine. “What are you going to do about it?”

Ares laughed and his breath seared her cheek. “Fuck, how much do you want?”

Aphrodite looped around the pole and pushed the nymph’s back to it. She hooked both the nymph and the pole with her leg. The nymph ran her hand along her thigh.

Ares’ mouth slid to Persephone’s shoulder and he peppered it with light crescents from his teeth. She threw her head back and sighed. Her hair erupted from the tight, little buns in a burst of petals and writhed in the air. He spun them and she panted with high laughter. She hiccuped so her flesh quivered as he dropped her onto the edge of the platform and braced his hands either side of her, looming over her like a ship bearing down on a seal pup. She grabbed his tie to stay upright and he lurched forward. They kissed again and now it was combative, feverish. She tried to undo his tie and her fingers fumbled as his lips made her dizzy. He darted to help her, tearing the strip of silk away and flinging it behind her onto the platform at Aphrodite’s feet. She glanced at it with a mischievous glint in her eye. Ares’ mouth skidded over the rise of Persephone’s breasts, the hot light blooming on them and his mask tickling her. He stroked up her thighs and lapped her collarbone and singed her skin with his breath. His fingertips hooked her panties. She swallowed and shivered and gripped his shoulders. He paused. The flaring pink in his eyes flickered. 

“Yeah?” He whispered.

Persephone bit her lip. Her clit beat a war drum. Her stomach might as well have had a trapeze artist living in it. The firework sparks flared behind him, turning him into a silhouetted storm cloud. She learned long ago that every good plot of earth needs a good storm every now and then. 

Her panties were in the grass before she had finished nodding. 

Ares gathered her in his crushing arms and kissed her fiercely, sucking the blood to her lips. Her breath fled her as his hand stole around her waist and over her thigh and traced up its inside. His fingertips brushed her clit. Her voice came rolling out in shuddering moans. He dropped his head and groaned softly into her neck. His hand melted to her.   
  
“Oh, Ares…”

His fingers moved like wheat in the breeze, like vines curling around branches. They stroked and coaxed her wet and wanting. She sank back into his firm hand at her back and gazed at his slack jaw and his pumping shoulders as he stared down at her, enthralled, and drew the pleasure out of her strand by strand. Her eyes rolled back and he cradled her carefully as she lost her balance and Aphrodite wheeled upside-down into her vision, coating the nymph in licks and laps as the nymph slinked against the pole and rippled like running water. Aphrodite’s dazzling, enchanted eyes rolled to Persephone. She peeled away from the nymph. She prowled towards Persephone.

The flowing pleasure in Persephone’s body skipped nervously. 

_Well, this is one way to die…_

But Aphrodite's lips were in a pansy-bloom smile. She held Persephone’s eye, warm and wily, and came to stand behind her with her legs apart proudly. Persephone tilted her head back and gazed into the small, heart-shaped wet stain on the gusset of Aphrodite’s panties. Her tongue instinctively ran along her lips. Aphrodite put a new flavour in the air, one that clung to her taste buds and made her mouth water. Aphrodite flicked her overwhelming gaze to Ares. He lifted his eyes to her and Persephone could feel the cord between them taut along her body. 

“You treating her right this time, Honey Bear?” Aphrodite’s voice was purple smoke.

Ares poked his tongue between his teeth.

Aphrodite looked back down to Persephone, her lips parted as if she might catch a falling drop from the goddess on the tip of her tongue.

“What do you want from him, Cupcake?” Aphrodite asked.

Persephone made a muffled whining sound. Ares’ fingers were making it so hard to think in complete sentences and being below Aphrodite’s body was like watching the twilight draw in in Spring. She folded herself back up to look at Ares, his shoulders bunched in his lazy lean over her as he circled his thumb deeper into her flesh, her knees unlocking. Her eyes drifted to his open collar and into the shadow of his shirt. Her hands moved without permission. She battled with his buttons, but her kid gloves made her clumsy, that and his flash of a cocky grin and a sudden surge of speed on her clit. 

“Sugar. Snaps.” She huffed, plucking uselessly. 

Ares and Aphrodite cackled in a harsh harmony. Aphrodite crouched at her side and they each snatched one of her wrists and with jackal grins bit her fingertips and pulled her gloves off with their teeth. Their canine masks turned Persephone into a helpless kitten with nowhere to run. Ares hurriedly unbuttoned his shirt. It slid from him. His body glimmered and entranced Persephone like a bonfire. White scars webbed his golden skin like ground crystal in the cracks of sandstone. His muscle formed a perfect path for the eye to traverse every tempting inch of his torso. He darted his hand back to her and she shivered around his relentless touch. He dropped the glove and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist. She moaned long and luxuriant and tumbled back to gaze bewitched into Aphrodite’s face. Aphrodite tossed her glove away and spun on her knees. The light was extinguished blissfully as she hovered her pussy over Persephone’s face. 

Persephone let the darkness take her. She slithered her spine on the platform, her layers of pink gauze trailing around her like she was a ruby nestled in tissue paper at some extremely expensive and exquisitely tasteful store. Her writhing met Ares’ fingers and the pleasure danced along her belly and her legs. She bobbed her face up and her lips met Aphrodite’s panties. The soaked satin was like water in a drought. Persephone sucked and moaned at Aphrodite’s sweetness, moaning higher as Aphrodite leaned forward and massaged her breasts. Aphrodite rocked on her, filling her mouth with her taste and clouding her senses in the perfume and the misty heat of her body. 

Somewhere far away, Persephone heard Ares’ husking voice. “Fuck, you two will be the death of me.”

Persephone’s eyes were dazzled and her ears crackled as Aphrodite pulled from her and released her to the light and the throb of music. She stood over her, rising as if being reborn from the sea. The nymph sneaked to her back and stroked her hands around her waist. Aphrodite ducked back, pecked her lips, then levelled her gaze at Ares with her lips full like she was sucking a lollipop. 

“Down, Boy.”

She kicked out her stilettoed foot and dragged the point of her shoe over Ares’ shoulder. He groaned and the muscles in his back contoured. She dragged her lethal heel along his skin, tapped her toe down on his shoulder blade and pressed. He sank under her foot with absolutely no resistance. He collapsed to bend over Persephone’s pussy and his mouth met it with a rough moan.

Persephone’s back arched and she gasped for breath. 

Ares’ tongue unfurled from his lips and he began to coil Persephone around his taste buds. Her body washed away into the music.

_Well, this is one way to die…_


	4. Fairy Lights: Woodland Creatures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hecate, Artemis and Athena. Relaxing, seducing, starting to let go.

They didn’t know who moved first. But someone had moved, and then another, and then the third, and now they were caught in a net of shadow from the branches and there was no way of cutting themselves free. There was no desire to. Hecate reclined back on the blanket with her elbows up on a low bench, the pieces of her velvet suit strewn about her like burgundy pools of sacrificial blood, leaving her in nothing but her sapphire pendant and her mask. The rose sparkle floated over her, sponging lilac onto her lapis lazuli body and slipping in the shine of her hair. Her skin tingled with the exposure to the cool air and the warmth of alcohol. Athena slouched beside her, her shirt cast away and her binder emphasising the hewn granite of the muscles in her back and torso. Her fine lips padded tender, precise kisses around Hecate’s breasts. Hecate’s nipples were hard as gemstones and her breath shuddered as Athena teased them with her teeth and brushed her skin with the grey feathers of her mask. Her skilful, confident touch worked in a controlled pattern around Hecate’s body, massaging her abdomen, her thighs, her calves, her arms. Hecate sighed and tensed her pelvic floor to encourage the stealthy waves of arousal from Athena’s methodical touch. She writhed under Athena’s mouth and hands. Artemis, stretched like a panther along the bench beside her, teased with her archer’s fingers in the roots of Hecate’s hair and flickered her tongue around her ear and throat in quick, greedy licks that scattered sensation all across Hecate’s shoulders and down her spine. 

Hecate stroked Athena’s hair, smiling at the tousled cotton-grass flicks. She turned her head and pushed her brow to Artemis’, levered her face up and hooked her tongue, lassoing her into a deep, open-mouthed kiss. Artemis’ lips were eager and insistent. Hecate purred through her black mask and rose to the challenge, bearing down on Artemis’ mouth like a cat toying with a mouse, vanquishing it, taming it. Artemis sighed and the silver crescent hanging between the antlers of her deer skull mask shook and sprinkled pale light over the slopes of her midnight flesh. 

“You like this?” Hecate whispered to her, her voice gruff and resonant, like she was summoning something from a cauldron.

Athena’s owl hooted from the trees, a nightingale answered. A breeze brushed through the leaves and the shadows fluttered across their bodies. The squeezed-out lime wedges from the tequila tray perfumed the air, zingy and sweet. Daisies were growing around them, fresh and soothing. Artemis’ lower lip quivered and her eyes burned magenta through her mask. She nodded.

Hecate leisurely took her hand and kissed it. She slipped Artemis’ fingertips between her teeth and lapped them once with a playful crinkle in her nose. Artemis bit her lip. 

“Touch yourself.” Hecate whispered. 

Artemis released her lip and it flushed black. She hesitated. She glanced at Athena. Athena peered at her with her piercing, round eyes through the owl mask, still folded over Hecate’s body, the light trickling into the scar down her cheek and making it look fresh. A small smile emerged on her lips around Hecate’s nipple. Artemis felt anticipation and lust pulse through her. She slid her hand under the high hem of her dress and began to stroke. Her fingers were cautious at first, but the tremors of pleasure that began to course in her veins chased away her apprehension. She slipped her hands into her panties and caressed herself, rubbing the blood into her labia and strumming her clit to a sharp ache. Her body trembled and she felt hotter than ignited oil under the intense, bright burn of Hecate’s stare.

Hecate licked her teeth and felt her core coil and her excitement thud in the insides of her wrists and thighs. Watching Artemis prowl out of herself, creep from her cage and turn wild, was a special sort of thrill. Hecate loved nothing more than the depths, than the hidden, than finding the beasts that live in the caverns in our cavities. She could sense Artemis growing, evolving, transforming into what Hecate had always thought a hunter should be. Before anything, before disciplined and resilient and focused, a hunter should be hungry. Desperately hungry. Artemis was a being of appetites and Hecate would show her that before the sunrise. 

Artemis’ eyes fluttered and she shivered. She sat up suddenly with her back to them and Hecate’s eyes flashed as she clawed at the zipper of her dress and shed it furiously. She threw it away like a black beetle shell, panting heavily, kicking up Hecate’s heartbeat as the undulating curve of her muscular back was revealed. Her hair swept forward so Hecate could see her vertebrae shifting subtly under her skin with her restlessness. Hecate extended her wicked fingernails and drew them in black streaks down Artemis’ spine. Artemis moaned like a bear and collapsed back onto the bench, her head falling by Hecate’s elbow. She wasn’t wearing a bra and her full landscape of mounds and muscle glowed under the fireworks. She ran her hands over her skin and into her hair, writhing and catching her breath, then she flipped about like a fish on the deck, tugging and kicking off her panties. Her hand dove to the thicket of her pussy.

Hecate’s fangs poked from her lips as she smiled, flicking her tongue to taste Artemis’ arousal on the air. She touched her cheek. She reached for her nipple and plucked it like she was grape-picking, rolling it firm as Athena did the same to her and turned her spine into a python. Hecate kissed Athena’s hair and dropped her head back to gaze into the haze of the summer night. Athena massaged Hecate's arms, her belly, her abdomen. She moved her hand to Hecate's pussy and covered it like she was shaping a bow. She lined her index along Hecate's clit and began to rock and furl and flex her fingers. Hecate felt the serpent in her spine travel down, her whole body writhing and relaxing, her skin sizzling and her pulse popping. Artemis twisted on the bench, her legs falling wide. Athena rubbed the residue of Hecate’s desire between her fingertips.

They moaned into the branches and a crow took flight, a flurry of darkness across the face of the moon.


	5. Fairy Lights: Poacher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermes reels in Daphne and Ampelus, (some discussion of his and Daphne's relationships with Apollo).

Hermes walked through the party like a satisfied gardener through an allotment. To his right, a centaur had rolled onto his side, draped in the lap of a harpy, who rhythmically dragged her talons down his back as he whinnied. To his left, a satyr had a pumpkin-plump orange nymph laid out on a dessert table and was lapping whipped cream out of her belly button, a blob on his nose. Above him, two harpies locked talons and cartwheeled through the air, screeching in delight. The sunflower nymph bartender reclined on the bar, wreathed in rainbow light, his head raised to the heavens and his eyes closed rapturously as he poured wine over his bare chest and a hulking cyclops wrapped his waist with his huge hands and sucked the wine from his skin. The scents of disturbed earth and cigarette smoke and sex seeped into the heady, sugary air. Hermes ran his hand through his hair and grinned.

_Well done, Strawberry Shortcake._

His eyes fell on what looked through the glimmer like a walking flowerbed. Daphne was wandering listlessly through the fray, her hair uncoiling and the smudges of blue on her warm skin fizzing under the light. He fluttered his wings and skimmed the tips of the grass to land in front of her, with a flick of his hair and a skid of his heels.

“Hey!”

Daphne jumped out of her skin, her hand flying to her heart as she recovered. “Hermes!”

She giggled softly at the surprise and they smiled at each other. They lingered in the smile a moment.

“You lost your shirt again.” Daphne suppressed a bigger smile.

Hermes shrugged. “It's that kind of party.” He nodded his head down to her. “Which makes we wonder what you're doing on your own.”

Daphne looked down. “Apollo left.”

Hermes gaped. “He left?”

“Yeah.”

“I will never get that guy.” He shook his head in exasperation. She was still looking down, her large eyes shining. Hermes ducked his head to nudge them back up. “You didn't want to go with him?” 

Daphne shrugged.

Hermes twitched his mouth into a half-smile. “I'm glad you didn't.”

Daphne twisted her loose pink ringlet around her finger and nibbled on her cheek. She smiled, but it wavered. She seemed to be pushing herself to say something. “Hermes." She began hesitantly. "Does Apollo actually like me?”

Honestly, Hermes had no idea. He knew Apollo could feel things, he knew he could like people and care about people, in his way. Hermes had even seen him get really attached, albeit in a way he couldn’t relate to. The guy had been all over Persephone’s Fatesbook like poison oak. Actually, he still was. Where Daphne fit into all this, Hermes couldn’t tell. He couldn’t even really tell where Perse fit in. But, something was off, and here was this sweet girl on her own in the middle of a Hermes party. That wouldn’t do.

“How could he not?” Hermes asked softly.

Daphne sighed and twisted her fingers together. The petals on her mask ruffled. “He's just been getting kind of distant. And he can be a little sharp sometimes. I don't know. I just don't think I'm…” She swallowed. “Enough for him.”

Hermes felt a prickle of frustration and snorted it away. “What? Daph, no. Look, I love the guy, but…” He searched for his words and blew out through his lips. “He has this side to him. He does this to people. I don’t think on purpose. But, he makes them feel like they have to live up to him. Like they have to give him whatever he wants and not expect the same back, because he’s so important or whatever. He needs to feel important and he doesn’t trust people to do that for him by just caring about him, so he can get lost in these weird games. And you have to know him really well to know how to avoid it, and even better to know how to pull him out of it.”

Daphne’s bluebell eye was startling through the pink petals of her mask. She looked sorry, concerned.

“Don’t feel bad for him, it’s not your job to save everyone, you doofus.”

She laughed.

Hermes smiled, relaxing. He reached out and squeezed her forearm. “You've got a lot to give, Daph, don't throw it all into a black hole. Leave that to those of us stuck there already.”

Daphne’s smile turned warm, and a touch shy. It stroked Hermes on the back of the neck. “Thanks, Hermes. I'm really glad you live with him.” She turned her toe in, he glanced down at her sandaled feet and the cute cock of her knee. She pressed her lips together. “I really like that you're there when I come round.”

Hermes felt his palms tingle. As the fireworks had fallen he had started to feel the chaos call in his blood calm. As she looked at him with her huge eyes, the call rose again. She was feeling it. She needed it. He dropped his head forward so his fringe dusted his eyes. “Well, I like it when you come around.”

They smiled at each other.

Daphne broke his gaze. “I guess it's just that he's not what I expected.”

“No.”

Her eyes fluttered back to him. “You're not what I expected either. Tonight at least. There's something about you.”

He sneaked his lip between his teeth. “Something you like?”

“Something I don't quite understand.”

“Maybe you just need to get to know me a little better.” He took a step towards her, her scent of willow and peaches tickling his nose. He drifted his hands forward carefully and played his fingertips on her hips. He could feel the indent of her panties in her flesh. “Why didn’t you go home?”

She looked at his hands. Her fingers wandered up his forearms. “I wanted to stay. I like it here. I suppose I wasn’t done... dancing.”

Hermes felt a ripple in his abdomen. “Well, it’s a masquerade, none of us are ourselves tonight. So, if you wanna… _dance…_ with someone...”

He didn’t pull her, he bent his arms and she effortlessly bobbed against his body.

“Hermes… I shouldn't… Apollo…”

He gave her hips a light squeeze. A dark voice in the back of his mind whispered to him. _God of Thieves, steal something._ He flexed his neck and shook it away. This wasn’t about that. This was about tonight, the bliss, the chaos, the mission. And Daphne was a part of that. He needed her to know she was free. He didn’t need her to leave, he wasn’t swooping in, he wasn’t trying to hurt or spite or complicate anything. He just wanted this good, kind woman to know not everything was about everyone else. He lowered his voice. “How about, just for a night, you don't think about what Apollo wants you to be or do. About what anyone needs out of you. How about we make tonight a Daphne night?”

She looked almost startled. “Hermes…”

He bent his head and kissed her neck.

“Oh gods…” She went instantly weak at the knees, like one of those string toys with the big button on the base that collapse when you press your thumb to them. Her head rolled to open her neck and her hands rushed up his arms and clutched.

Hermes smiled and deepened his kiss, curling his hands around her hips. He started to drift into the feel of her skin and her scent and her breath on his shoulder. He was startled out of it as she shot away from him, grabbed his hand and began to run, pulling him behind her with surprising strength.

“Daph!”

She whipped back to him, her smile broad and bucky. “Now.” She breathed.

Hermes’ body pulsed. He broke into wild laughter and tore after her, letting her lead, getting high on the hunger with which she pulled him along. As they stumbled through the tumult of bodies and moans and giggles, he caught a flash of bronze in the corner of his eye. They were racing past a peach tree and underneath it, alone, stood Ampelus. She seemed almost oblivious to her surroundings. She gazed up into the sky with her hands folded over her heart. Hermes put a hand on Daphne’s arm and stopped her.

“One sec.”

He slipped from her and hurried to Ampelus, skidding to a halt by the tree and leaning on it with a blazing grin. “You’re doing this wrong.”

She turned to him with an amused twist to her mouth. “My host disappeared.”

Hermes rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, sorry, I got waylaid.”

“Looks like it.” She smirked. “Where’s your shirt?”

“Why does everyone keep asking that? It’s a damn orgy!”

“Did you lose your shirt during or before the orgy?”

“No comment.”

She chuckled. Her eyes were drawn back to the sky, the pink glow leaking into her pupils. Hermes followed her gaze. Eros shone overhead like a dove soaring out of a magician’s hat. 

Understanding dawned on Hermes. He nudged her. “In a little bit, I'm going to shoot that birdie down and have him for supper.” His smile was knowing and teasing. “Wanna join?” 

Ampelus snapped her eyes to him. They held each other’s gaze a long, uncertain moment.

“Yes.”

He beamed. He seized her hand. He pulled her into a run, the train of her dress a river rapid in the grass. As they reached Daphne, glowing with glee, she seized Hermes’ other hand and they hastened through the fray, hooting and cackling like tamarins.


	6. Fairy Lights: Merfolk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poseidon, Amphitrite, and a bunch of naughty river nymphs. We just drown that sea-king.

Poseidon was drowning. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t breath, he never wanted to again. He was stretched out on the craps table like he was about to be filleted, pinned in place by a hail of sensations that had taken total control of his body. Amphitrite had her shimmering legs spread and was riding his face like a hippocamp. Her thighs closed about his ears so the blood roared in his skull and the heat encased him, clouded him, filled his body. Her soft, folded flesh stuffed between his lips and dragged on his tongue, overpowering him with her flavour and her pungency. She was wet, ocean wet, gushingly, intoxicatingly wet. It was like a sponge squeezing out into his mouth. He lashed with his tongue, blind with thirst, gulping and gorging, gluttonous, gleeful. She ground over his face, smearing him with her scent, smothering his airways so he almost choked.

Amphitrite piled her cascading cream hair on top of her head and pinned it in a cumulus cloud with her long, lethal fingernails, letting the air cool her neck as her cold blood boiled. She rolled her body, her fat and muscle rippling as she threw her whole, delicious form into the scoop of her hips and the press of her pussy, surging over Poseidon like the undertow of the sea. The spirals across her skin swirled, an enrapturing optical illusion under the dizzying fireworks. 

Her weight compressed Poseidon's skull. He twisted his neck to reach every sliver of her, plunging and stirring and scouring with his long, agile tongue. A small, smothered part of him wanted to be in control of himself, to work his way systematically around her and unpick her resilience like Penelope undoing her daily weaving. But he was bewildered, reeling, adrift in a storm, and not only from Amphitrite. His cock ached and pounded with pleasure. A river nymph leaned over him, eyes like the sky over a tropical island and a smile that an angler fish would envy. She tucked his cock between her breasts, sliding up and down, submerging his pip of nerve-endings in hot, tacky, sinking softness. She bunched her breasts around him and massaged the blood to rush in his shaft, turning him stiffer than the mast of a ship. He seeped dew onto her topaz skin, a winking glisten lacing her flesh. He moaned and it vibrated in Amphitrite’s swollen labia, kissing his lips and gliding on his chin.

Every time his enthralling queen scooped forward and rotated her hips to crush him again, he caught a wisp of breath and a snippet of sound. The clack of dice, the tinkle of ice on metal, the drum of excited hands on the wooden table edge, flurries of wicked, chaotic giggling and snatches of shrill speech.

“My turn!”

“Sssssnake eyes!”

“Grab a handful, Hun!”

The crowd of nymphs, who had watched him win what must have been half of his brother’s fortune, all jumped and jostled around the table, playing eagerly for who got to taunt him next, and what they got to do. They chewed on his nipples, scattered halved strawberries on his abs and gobbled them off his singing skin, drizzled champagne over his chest and traced its path with their tongues, pinched him and scratched him and tickled him so he shook violently and Amphitrite bucked and slid on him, slapping him in reprimand. And they iced him. They grabbed handfuls of ice cubes from the champagne bucket and ground it into his flesh, slicked it along his sternum, dabbed it on the sensitive furrows over his hips, numbed his nipples with it then burned them back to life with their mouths. One nymph burrowed under the nymph on his cock and froze his balls. He coughed a muffled cry into Amphitrite’s pussy and she gagged him with her clit, forcing him to silence and suck. The cruel nymph cackled and let the ice melt and pour away in her hand. She touched a cool finger to his perineum and massaged it so the pleasure seeped into his core. 

He felt like a pebble in the tide, eroding away, tossed and toyed with and sinking, sinking, sinking…

In the teaming noise and confusion, he heard Amphitrite moan. Her moan was music. It disturbed the depths, it rippled him like a cormorant cutting through the swell. It was deep and sonorous and commanding. It said that she knew what she wanted, that she would destroy him if it meant eeking out just one more droplet of pleasure for herself, and that she had every fucking right to. He stroked his hands over her thighs, smooth as glass with her silver scales, and clung to her like a lifesaver, letting her pull him into her rodeo rhythm as her thighs pistoned around him. 

His body rolled through sensations, loose and liquid one moment, rigid and roasting the next. He panted desperately in the pillow of Amphitrite’s pussy and heated her, her wetness turning steamy and scalding his mouth, her taste intensifying, enveloping him, taste ruling his other senses. The luxuriant, cloying softness around his cock warmed him. Sweat broke out on his back and the crooks of his knees and between his thighs. His cock pulsed hard and he grasped Amphitrite’s flesh until his fingers ached, forcing himself back from the brink. He filled his sinuses and his lungs with her familiar, moreish, underwater scent. He stretched his aching jaw and flailed and flexed his tongue to take as much of her into his mouth as he possibly could.

He dove into the depths.


	7. Fairy Lights: Liquid Courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zeus and Hera. Maybe this time...

Hera and Zeus leaned on their forearms on opposite sides of one of the tall, narrow, circular tables, drinking matching marigold cocktails overloaded with garlands and sprigs. Nearby, the two stilt-walkers crashed into each other passionately and went careening to the floor in a tangle of clownish fabric and clanking poles. Zeus winced. Hera was unmoved, the stilt-walkers seemed fine. They were warring with their billowing costumes as they tried to get at each other’s wiry bodies. 

Hera exhaled sharply through her nose. “I could have married Ares off aeons ago. Now look what he and his love goddess made.”

Zeus slurped the honey in the bottom of his glass. “Don't be a stick in the mud, everyone's having a good time.”

Hera surveyed the scene. “I suppose.” She allowed herself a subtle bitter laugh.

Zeus followed her eyes and leaned his cheek on his hand. “I love nights like this.” He said wistfully.

Hera bristled. “Depraved and debauched?”

He didn’t look at her. “I mean the masks.”

Her gaze traced the tissue paper mane of his lion mask, its round snout snuffing out his sharp nose. She adjusted the crooked ear of her rabbit mask.

“I get to be a different person for a little while.” Zeus said quietly.

Hera felt something stir inside herself. She brushed it away and fussed with her mask again. “As opposed to a different species.” She grumbled. There was such a glut of pretty young things here, she couldn’t fathom what he was still doing at their table.

He turned, levelling his gaze at her as if he was shooting her with a grappling hook. He spoke with a sobriety at odds with the amount she’d seen him drink tonight, with tenderness even. “I get to meet you all over again.”

Hera stilled. She lowered her hands from the wire frame of the rabbit ears. She smoothed the front of her dress. He watched her steadily, his face impassive, at least what she could see of it. Where was the coquettish grin? The boyish look? The old leer? Those faces all cycled through her memory. The way he laughed. The way he chewed his pencil when he was doing work, for once. They way he snuffled when he slept. 

“I don't want you to be a different person.” She said, not looking at him.

“Perhaps, at least, a different me?”

His hand left his glass and crept over the table. Hera glanced at it. His fingers stretched toward her and twitched.

His voice smoked a little. “For a few hours, it's another world.”

She stuck her nose in the air and crossed her arms. “One where I don't have to look at your face. Bonus.”

“Bunny…” Zeus’ tone was somewhere between pleading and amusement. She could hear it in him, he wanted to play. She was a woman of war, a queen, a mother, a marriage goddess, the one who stepped in when playtime was over. Everyone in all the realms feared her. Only Zeus dared play with her. 

She looked up at the mayfly swirl of pink sparkles. It made everything look warm and kitsch and rather silly. Her eyes pricked and she blinked and looked at Zeus, his golden mask over his indigo skin like sunrise over the mountains. His lips were softly curled, almost smiling, asking permission to smile. His mouth was the most twisted thing about him, it could do anything you wanted it to, that’s what made it so dangerous. Gods, it could do anything, though.

She took a deep breath and, with great reluctance, released the words that had begun to push insistently on her tongue. “So, what would you say, if you were meeting me for the first time tonight?”

Zeus broke into a wide, crescent grin, his teeth stark white, his eyes flooding pink and shining. He recovered himself and cleared his throat, mirth tinting his words. “Oh, nothing. I'd be far too nervous.” He leaned forward, resting his cheek on his hand again and giving her awful goo-goo eyes. “How could I go and talk to the most beautiful, ferocious, powerful woman in the party?”

Hera tutted and flapped her hand at him. “You don't mean that.”

He dropped his hand and dropped his foolish face. “You know when I'm lying.”

Hera’s pulse paused. She could feel familiar palpitations striking up in her body. Old, long dormant, but familiar. Her stomach fluttered. She moved to put her hand to it, then stopped herself. She put her hands resolutely by her sides and curled them to dig her fingernails into her palm, distracting herself from the rest of the waking sensations. His fingers were still reaching for her in the space between them. 

“Alright.” She said, icing her voice with a challenging tone. “We’ll be different people tonight.” She leaned over the table like a dealer staring down a man with a card up his sleeve. “Pretend you're brave enough to speak to me. What would you say?”

Zeus knocked back some of his garish cocktail as if it was whiskey. He thought for a moment, then he answered in a lilting tone that summoned her blood like a magnet. “I would say that I curse being king of the gods. There is no one I can sacrifice to, to grant me my desires.”

Hera’s mouth went dry. She wet her lip. Her voice croaked a little. “And what are your desires?”

His voice deepened. “Too many.” 

She huffed and rolled her eyes. “And too wide-ranging and too base for the stuff of prayer.”

Zeus’ eyes flickered over her. She watched them travel the soft slopes of her shoulders and her breasts.

“No.” He said, his deep voice softening, his breath snagging. “Those are my appetites. My desires are high and they all live in one place.”

Her jaw quivered. She clenched her teeth. She tightened her lips. His hand slid along the table a fraction.

“You know when I'm lying.” He said it in almost a whisper, as if he was afraid anything louder might break whatever was weaving between them in the air.

She did know when he was lying. That’s what was so hideous. She always had to know. She always had to decide to live with it. And she did always decide that. So much hurt. She’d never met anyone else in her ancient, endless years who had the capacity to cause her real pain. And joy. And mischief. And excitement. And hope. Sweet, darling, ruthless, devastating hope. There was an ache under her tingling. She couldn’t tell if it was a good ache or a bad one, only that she knew it wouldn’t go away if she left.

Zeus rotated his hand, his palm falling open like a lotus flower. He lowered his face to look deep into her eyes and she could see something in him that she hadn’t seen in a very long time, something she remembered craving once. He cleared his throat softly. “What would you say, if I was brave enough to tell you how much I want you?”

She cupped her cocktail and pressed her palms to the glass, steadying herself on the cold of the ice. She tried to stop looking into his eyes. She couldn’t. She allowed herself so few indulgences. She was always so disciplined, so in control. It was exhausting. She could suddenly feel the scars of the effort in her muscles. Did she always have to be perfect? Did she always have to be the queen? One person, one person in all the realms for whom she was less than that, more than that. A pink pompom of light bobbed over Zeus’ head and washed his hair in ink. His exquisitely carved jaw stood out in the shadow, the gentle wave of his hair softening his strong features. His square shoulders bunched. She thought about how much room they took up in the bed. She thought about the dimple in them the exact size of her head. She thought about the day they realised they had 6 weeks exactly until Hebe’s due date and they held each other close, protecting the precious bump, and he moved in her with incredible gentleness, the three of them more deeply connected than they ever could be again. She thought about the time when they’d just met and he followed her around for three days asking for a kiss. About the fourth day when she gave in. And the fifth. And the sixth. About the first time he bought her lingerie and how he’d broken the clasp with his teeth. About fucking in the sea. About falling asleep on the couch. About rubbing his back at the end of a long day and feeling him melt into her touch. 

She laid her hand over his. It stilled, as if a butterfly had just landed on it. “I would say…” She took another careful breath. She let it go. “That there is one god higher than you. Make your sacrifices to her, and she may grant you your desires.” 

His hand closed on hers. It moulded to her, fit her perfectly.

She took one more breath.

She swept around the table into his arms.

Their kiss was waves crashing on the shore, thunderclouds colliding, the roots of trees meeting underground. They rushed into each other, all friction and electric charge. He whimpered into her mouth and gathered her to him and lifted her onto her toes, smothering her in the scents of honey and cologne and rain. She screwed her eyes shut and clamped his face between her hands and clung to him as if she was falling from a precipice. He clutched her tight, assuring her. 

They sank into the grass. Her stockings ripped as she landed on her knees. He scurried to sit with his legs kicked out and hoisted her to straddle his lap, the hem of her straight dress protesting and retreating up her thigh. He cupped her face and brought her over and over to his lips. They ran their hands on each other, feeling each other, remembering everything, delighting in it anew. Hera gripped his lapels and bit his lip. He gasped and pressed his fingertips into the small of her back. She started to wrestle with his crisp, cream jacket.

“I hate this suit.” She panted sharply. “Gods, I wish you knew how to fucking dress yourself.”

Zeus grazed his teeth on her jaw, his chest billowing as he fought for breath. “Take it off me, take it all off.” 

She attacked his clothes like a wildcat. He writhed and moved his limbs cooperatively, sucking her neck hard as she stripped him bare.

“Leave the mask.”

“Obviously.”

“Hera, I…”

“Shut up.”

Every inch of skin his mouth touched turned to fire. She hadn’t been touched in too long and she had almost forgotten what it did to her. She was a marriage goddess. She was the damn goddess of never losing the wonderful giddiness of being touched. He was naked beneath her. The insides of her thighs misted with sweat around him. She looked over his smooth, crocus-petal skin; his large, oval nipples, like stains from split figs, the fine definition of his muscles, his moles and dimples, crooks and curves and the crest of silk hair around his dark cock. He was already hard, it kissed her belly and left a droplet shining on her dress. Her mouth felt full, her core felt full, and then horribly empty. He was trembling. His hands caressed her waist and his eyes glimmered, illuminating her body as they travelled around her.

“You too?” He murmured tentatively.

She reached back and harshly half-unzipped her dress.

His hands stopped hers and he kissed her cheek. “Let me do it.”

She hesitated, then relinquished the zip. He tugged it down slowly, his fingertip drawing down her spine and turning it to rippling ribbon, the air stealing over her back and tickling her as she was slowly exposed. He circled his tongue along her shoulder as he did. He caught her eye, smiled, and drew the dress softly over her head. His hands kept glancing her, delicate and daring. She had forgotten how it felt to have him undress her. She usually did it herself, even if they were on bedroom terms. There was a thrill to feeling him want her unclothed, that drugging Zeus want. He shelled her like a peanut. She was left raw and golden, her lingerie the same colour as her skin. As the dress came free of her head it knocked her mask askew. He placed the dress down carefully and bit his lip a little cheekily as he readjusted her mask, prodding the crooked ear and kissing her nose. She bit her lip to keep from laughing. He cradled her waist and rocked back and gazed at her for a long, still moment. She told herself he looked at all women like this. She didn’t listen to herself. There was a thrill to having him gaze at her, that drugging Zeus gaze. The sounds of the party seemed to vanish. Everything became silent between them.

“I love how damn beautiful you are.” He whispered.

“I hate how damn beautiful you are.” She replied.

He folded his arms and drew her closer, sliding up his lap. The base of his cock bumped her pussy. “I’ll take it.”

“I said shut up.” 

They sank to each other’s mouths with a needy, relieved moan. He ran his hand up her back and unsheathed her hair pin. A fountain of molten gold spilled around them and he sighed worshipfully and buried his fingers in it. His tongue serpentined around hers. He teased the roots of her hair, prickling her with static.

They tipped sideways and collapsed into the grass.


	8. Fairy Lights: Death and the Maiden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We return to Persephone's group and play a little more, treating Ares like he goddamn deserves. Hades arrives and he and Persephone explore each other for the first time.

“Are you sure it’s not going to come undone?” Aphrodite crooned.

Persephone stuck her head indignantly around Ares’ bicep. “I have trained many a tomato plant up a trellis, I think I know how to tie a good knot, thank you.”

Aphrodite chuckled and went back to trailing her fingernail around Ares’ throat. His Adam’s apple bobbed and his jaw tensed as she needled his skin, lining her body along his and purring into his ear. His back was pressed to the pole and he was secured there with his tie binding his wrists behind him, cutting in pleasingly as Persephone gave it a final tug. Aphrodite and the nymph snuggled to his drawn body and teased him, pausing to kiss, distracted in turns by him and each other.

Persephone stepped back and sucked on the tip of her little finger as she took in the look of Ares bound. His hulking shape silhouetted in the rainbow light washing up from the platform base, as if he was a phoenix rising from embers. Pink glimmers trickled in the furrows of his form, his back flexing, his shoulder blades moving under his muscle as he writhed against the touches on his skin. His hair was a mess and his hands twisted in the bonds. He had struggled like a python as the three of them wrestled him into position, laughing and snapping and lashing them with his blazing tongue. Persephone could still feel the traces of it cooling on her skin, could still feel the imprint of his mouth on her clit. 

“Get in here, Cupcake.” Aphrodite urged, ducking around in a sweep of lavender and beckoning Persephone. Persephone felt like a fish on the hook of her finger. She was drawn to Aphrodite like a hummingbird to nectar. She glided to her, her face flushing on looking again at Aphrodite’s beautiful body in its drizzled satin sauce. Aphrodite looked into her eyes, the magenta glow from her pupils so intense it pricked Persephone’s retinas. She took her hand and brought Persephone gently to stand in front of her, facing Ares. Persephone pouted at being turned from the vision, but she sucked happily on her tongue at the sight of Ares’ bronzed torso, strained back by the bonds so his strength simmered visibly under the surface. Her eyes trailed down to his red, hard cock, pointing towards them like an impatient, loyal hound. 

Aphrodite leaned to her ear and her whisper tickled. “He’s such a desperate little bitch.” She glided her hand down Persephone’s arm, making the hairs stand on end, and interlaced her fingers over hers. “Want to feel how needy he is?”

Persephone nodded, the butterfly wings of her mask fluttering eagerly. Aphrodite guided her hand and folded it around Ares’ cock. Aphrodite wriggled her fingers on Persephone’s, helping her wrap around his shape, grasp him confidently and feel the details of his veins and pulses. She began to guide Persephone’s hand up and down, brutally slowly, twisting up the shaft and tilting her palm over the tip, pressing her thumb into the ridge down the back and strumming the fold of skin at the top. Ares shuddered and the silk of the tie creaked. He slinked his back, scraping it raw on the metal pole. The nymph plucked his nipples and licked his shoulder, making him serpentine and punish his skin more. The faded peach scar over his belly button warped and stretched as his abs rolled and Persephone smiled at it, remembering their meeting. 

She felt Aphrodite smiling at him past her cheek. His eyes flickered past Persephone to her and he bit his lip and smiled around it. He dropped his head back against the pole and it clinked. He winced and muttered.  “Fuck… Fuck, that feels good.”

Aphrodite whispered in Persephone’s ear. “Ask him if he likes it.”

Persephone tingled, her words came out a little squeaky. “Do you like it?”

Aphrodite pinched her ass. “Come on, not like you actually want to know.”

“How then?”

“Like you’re telling him he should.”

Persephone swallowed. She pushed her voice lower. She looked at Ares with a warm glimmer. “Do you like this?” She was surprised at her own tone. 

Ares’ eyes smouldered and the corner of his mouth lifted. “I like this a whole lot, Perse.”

“Tell him you’re going to make him yours.” Aphrodite whispered.

“I’m going to make you mine.” Persephone echoed, her lip trembling.

Ares chuckled and his chest billowed in a heaving breath. “You really fucking are, you minx.”

Persephone smiled brightly. She leaned back against the perfumed softness of Aphrodite’s body and relaxed into the rhythm of their stroke on his cock, tactile and thrumming and thickening. The nymph flicked his belly button and he chuckled gruffly and craned to bite her fin.

“Talk to us, Honey Bear.” Aphrodite purred, her breath warm on Persephone’s neck. “I like it when you talk, these nice girls should hear it.”

Ares grinned and dropped his head forward and licked his teeth. He began to speak in a low earthquake rumble. “You three are such fucking forces of nature. I feel like I’m finding out how the earth felt when it was first created. You’re beautiful and regal and so fucking filthy. Gods, I love how filthy you are. Use me and come on me and throw me into the fucking dirt.”

Persephone coiled at her core. His voice resonated in her body. Aphrodite’s clever hand sneaked under Persephone's short, ruffled skirt and her fingers slipped to her pussy. Persephone quivered as she began to stir and stroke, virtuosic in her playing. It disrupted her rhythm on Ares’ cock and Aphrodite squeezed her hand and guided her again.

Ares’ head nodded to stare at where Aphrodite’s fingers nestled into Persephone’s flesh. He gruffed longingly and his words came deeper and breathier. “Oh Gods, yeah… You ready for this, Perse? She’s a villainess. She’s going to make you shake like that until you’re a pretty, pink puddle in her evil, little hands.”

Pleasure skipped across Persephone’s belly. She sighed high and shivered, gumming in the mist of sweat on Aphrodite’s torso. 

“Alright, now he’s talking too much.” Aphrodite tutted.

The nymph grinned and shimmied her panties off and stuffed them hard into Ares’ mouth. He groaned greedily and his head thunked back onto the pole again, his eyes rolling into the darkness of the mask. Persephone took a trembling breath, threw her head back and pushed Aphrodite’s lips apart with hers, like a kid opening her mouth to let rain fall on her tongue. Aphrodite returned her kiss with gentle insistence, setting their pace, her lips giving Persephone the effervescent, dissolving feeling of eating sherbet. The circling on her clit deepened and she hiccuped and shook.

Persephone’s eyes opened dreamily. And then they shot wide. Her breath halted. Her heart kicked her rib cage. 

Hades was standing below the platform, staring up at them with his mouth hanging open.

Persephone gasped and clenched her fists in shock. Ares barked through the panties as she clamped his cock. She recoiled from him, throwing her hands up in attempted innocence and stumbling away from Aphrodite. Aphrodite steadied her with a frown, then followed her startled eyes.  She turned back to her with a suppressed grin. “Oops.” 

“Oops?” Persephone clapped her hands to her blazing cheeks, hissing at Aphrodite’s smirk. “OOPS? This is a disaster!”

Aphrodite wagged her finger and tutted. “This.” She wet her lip. “Is an opportunity.”

Persephone pressed her lips tight together and puffed out her cheeks, like a soap bubble about to pop. Her heart hammered, her stomach somersaulted. All she’d wanted was a night off from everything. She’d been hoping all week that Hades would be here and when he hadn’t shown she’d felt lost and blue. She’d just wanted to let go, just for a little bit. And now this? What was he going to think of her?

“Trust me.” Aphrodite murmured. “You just won that guy for life.”

Persephone shook her head vigorously. She opened her mouth to speak and Aphrodite pinched her finger and thumb together in a hushing gesture. “Seriously, trust me.” She jerked her head back towards Hades. “Off you pop.”

Persephone glanced helplessly to Ares. He grinned. “Spread your wings, Smutterfly.”

The nymph winked. 

Persephone took a fortifying breath. Her knees were buckling. Nerves and embarrassment and curiosity and arousal collided and shattered in her body. Her pink gauze dress was rumpled around her and the back of her neck burned. She tottered to the edge of the platform, hearing the soft sighs of the other three melting into each other like ice cream on a hot day. Hades was a little way off. He was in a dark blue suit with a crisp sky blue pocket square and a mask like a skull, etched with smoke-curl patterns in inlaid silver. His white butter-curl of hair gleamed rosy in the fairy lights. His winter-twilight eyes were wide in the round sockets of the mask. His lips parted, soft and uncertain. She tried to define the look in his eyes. It was almost delirious. 

She steeled herself and hovered her foot over the platform edge to step down, wobbling a little. Hades started and hurried forward, extending his hand up to her. Persephone looked down at him. His jaggedly hewn features always seemed to smooth when he looked at her. She put her hand in his, cool and reassuring. As he helped her down she felt like a falling dandelion seed. She landed in the grass and looked resolutely at his silver tie pin, not wanting to look closely into his face. She kept hold of his hand. 

“This is what happens if you're a little late, I suppose.” His voice drifted down to her like cigarette smoke.

Persephone tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, keeping her eyes on that silver glint at her eye level. “This is so unlike me.” She gabbled. “I never do stuff like this, I swear.”

The tie pin moved. It sank out of her eye line and before she could find somewhere else to look, Hades’ face was in front of hers. He had dropped to one knee, scooping up her hand between them. His eyes roved around the butterfly wings and his mouth twitched sweetly. 

“I’m sorry.” He said sincerely, that whiskey rumble in his voice drumming deliciously on her abdomen. “I didn’t mean to stare. I was just…” His white teeth emerged in a sliver through his lips. “A tad taken aback.”

Persephone’s cheeks felt like pin cushions. “Never, Hades. Really, never. I don’t know what happened tonight. I…” She took a breath. “I was looking for you. And then Eros was talking about ice cream and then disappeared. And then everything got…” She scraped around in her mind for anything to say that would make sense. Her lips moved about in silent desperation. 

Hades put his finger to her lips. Her heart stopped at his touch on the tender skin. She forced herself to meet his eyes. A dainty pink orb of light bobbed between them. Its shine spilled into his eyes, turning them from soothing cornflower to a simmering foxglove. His gaze changed. It jump-started her pulse again.

Hades smiled his scoundrel smile. “How about you don't have to explain yourself to me, if I don't have to explain myself to you?”

Persephone’s voice muffled on his finger. “For what?”

He held her hand a little tighter, her fingers nestling into his soft palm. He drew his finger along her lip, then her cheek. He lightly cupped her face, her jaw resting in the dimple in the heel of his hand. 

He kissed her.

Everything stopped. The babble of the party hushed. The air stilled. Time suspended. This wasn’t like their first kiss, frenzied and fraught. From just that single moment days ago, Hades had learned her lips. He moved against her softly, coaxing, drawing her into a pool of calm and contentment. His tongue sought hers patiently and followed her lead, his mouth half pushing and half melding to hers and letting itself be manipulated. Persephone couldn’t feel the earth under her feet, couldn’t feel her fingertips, she went light-headed. She felt something heavy and coarse in her body being pulled away, opening her airways and letting her heart grow and bloom.

He broke his lips away, leaving hers puckered and flushed and her eyes sparkling. He sighed into a smile. “Do you promise not to turn into butterflies again? Because my heart can't take it.”

A giggle popped in Persephone’s chest. “I don't think I can make that promise.” She stepped into the cage of his body, his arm closing around her and the hand holding hers lifting to his chest. She could feel the steady, purposeful pound of his heart under her palm. “Just being this close to you drives me crazy.” She whispered.

Hades chuckled, glancing down and up again. “I know the feeling.”

Persephone licked her lips and smiled shyly. “I think tonight's a night for crazy.”

He squeezed her hand. “Then I'm glad I came.”

He stood and brought her up with him, folding her hand around his arm as if he was escorting her to the opera. They walked companionably in the flourishing park, Persephone’s head resting on Hades’ arm as they giggled behind their hands at some of the more outlandish acts being performed. Their eyes were periodically drawn to a bobbing ass or a spread pair of legs or a toss of hair or a garment rippling through the air as it was cast away. They always looked back to each other and tucked in a little closer. They came across a squat chaise longue, deep royal blue and padded with velvet. Beside it was a small table topped with a bottle of red wine and an assortment of glasses and colourful marzipan treats.

“Prime real estate.” Persephone beamed. “I can’t believe no one’s snapped this up.”

Hades smiled softly down at her and led her to the chaise. “It was waiting for us, obviously.”

They settled down on the velvet, their hands joined between them. Persephone stood out against the blue the way she did in the underworld, a lily blooming among dark dahlias. She gazed at Hades, the eternal, deep stillness in his eyes cutting her cords to the earth. The wild chorus inside her of Ares and Aphrodite and the dazzling dancers had faded. Now everything in her body cried out for this monumental man in front of her, his knee almost touching hers, his shoulders hunched as if trying to make himself smaller for her. He smelled of embers and whiskey and just the tiniest hint of Cerberus’ shampoo. His skull mask was somewhere between chilling and comical, much like him. 

She steadied herself and slid to line their thighs along each other, her softness meeting his ridge of muscle. Her hand crept to his lapel and she pulled herself up to his lips. He kissed her carefully, but she could sense the longing behind it. His eyes fell closed and his chest rose against her hand. He tasted of bitter cocoa and red grapes. She sank against him, her mind spinning into images of the evening, the writhing bodies, the arching backs, the thrusting and rolling and riding. She ached desperately. 

_ So this is what it feels like, the way it’s supposed to be.  _

She surged forward, suddenly gripping his lapels and kissing him feverishly, mewing like a kitten. Hades moaned in his throat and pulled her close, his large, agile hands running up her back to where her dress stopped, his touch connecting with her skin. His eyes screwed shut and his breath came in short, sharp gusts. She scrambled astride his lap and his moan turned rough. He clutched her and she shuffled to wrap his hips between her thighs. Their mouths almost fought, their kiss became so forceful. Hades’ fingernails dug into the fat on her back and her spine curved, pressing her breasts to his hard chest, her nipples tenting the fabric of her dress. 

She felt something nudge her panties. Her heart beat and she felt it in her clit. She glanced down. He was rising to her, his suit trousers creasing slightly around the mound. 

_ Sugar Snaps.  _

With Ares, it had all felt so unreal, she had floated along, a compliant chick waiting to be fed and petted. She didn’t have to worry because there was no thought in it at all. She didn’t want that with Hades. She couldn’t have that with him. Whatever was about to happen, it would mean something. She paused a moment against his lips, feeling him breathe. She waited to feel scared, or confused, or for a bad memory. It didn’t come. She trusted him. Absolutely. She wanted him. Absolutely. What did she want from this moment? She wasn’t sure. But she needed this moment to be with him. Absolutely.

She drew her hand down the buttons of his shirt and over the cool of his belt buckle. She laid her hand to his mound.

He gasped, his voice rasping and his clutch on her back clenching. His hips jerked up to press into her touch and his brow buckled. He pulled her into a close embrace, his face buried in her neck and his tongue silking on her skin. She trembled. His hips rocked instinctively and she shaped her hand to meet his movements. She could feel him getting harder, filling the dip in her palm. She rubbed her cheek on his hair and crushed his lapel in her fist. 

He halted. 

He eased himself away from her and leaned back on the back of the chaise. He looked down at her hand on his rise, his lower lip unstill. His chest expanded and shrank in slow, determined breaths. He tenderly took her hands from him, closed them in his clasp and kissed her fingertips. He raised his eyes to her and the pink glow dimmed lilac.

“Not too far, Little Goddess.”

Persephone blushed, taken aback. Something inside her shrank away, frightened. “I thought you wanted me. Do you not?” She asked tentatively.

Hades’ eyes widened and he closed her hands tighter. “Persephone. I want you. I want you more than oxygen. More than whiskey, and that really is something.” He stroked his thumb on her skin. “But not all at once tonight.”

She relaxed at his assurance. She couldn’t tell if the feeling in her chest was relief or disappointment. Her mask fluttered. “Are you sure?”

Hades kissed her hands again, his voice taking on some of the weight and mysticism of his age as his bone-white, silver-styled head bowed. “Something’s strange here tonight. And I’m not complaining because… Wow… But I think you might not be totally yourself.”

Persephone prickled, she leaned forward insistently. “I’m more myself with you than anyone.”

Hades smiled with a hint of the scoundrel back in the slant of his lips around his teeth. “Then trust me to tell when you might be too much of a horny mess to make good decisions?”

“I’m the horny mess?” Persephone piped, outraged. “You’re a horny mess on a regular Tuesday!”

Hades chuckled. “Touche. But I’m far more experienced than you.”

Persephone pouted and wrinkled her nose. “OK, blowing your own horn a little.”

Hades laughed his deep laugh. He stole a quick kiss from her pursed lips. “I don’t want you to have any regrets.” He said seriously.

“I’m nineteen.” 

“Don’t remind me.”

“So, I’m saying regrets are going to happen, whatever I do.”

“Not if I can help it.” He sighed and rubbed her hands in his, soothing her like he was calming a lynx by stroking its paws. “Persephone.” He said with an endearing lilt. “I’m not saying nothing. I’m saying we were going slow, and I think that was working for us. It was feeling good. We don’t need to go with this crowd or rush into anything. We’re gods, we have all the time in the world. There’s no milestone we have to reach because we passed one a certain number of days ago.” His lilt turned a note darker, stirring coffee. “Let’s just spend tonight feeling good.”

Persephone felt her body relax. The unknotting sensation she had been chasing all evening spread through her like rain through roots. “I really want that.” She sighed.

Hades’ eyes glimmered again and he leaned in and murmured against her lips, making them hum with pleasure. “You can have anything you want, Sweetness.” 

They dissolved into a kiss, leisurely this time, savouring, glorying. They began to undress each other, softly, checking permission for every scrap of fabric, constantly sidetracked by more long, luxurious kisses. How had they not been doing this constantly since the first time it happened? How had they ever stopped? It was wonderful, it was sunshine, it was rebirth, it was Spring. Persephone realised how much she had fixated just now on “sex”, how much the idea of his cock inside her had dominated her mind. With his careful removal of the option, a world of pleasure opened to her. Gods, just the feel of him undressing her. Years and years in the gardens and greenhouses, now she knew how it felt to be a flower breaking through the soil. The feel of his lips padding along her shoulder. Now she knew how it felt to unfurl petals and be warmed by the sun for the first time. The feel of his knuckles brushing her thigh and her arm and uncurling to interlace her fingers. Now she knew how it felt to be vines tangling in the branches. 

His breathing was rhythmic and lulling. She let it rock her. She tipped back, trusting his strong hands to hold her safe. Her breasts tingled with desire and, as his tongue obliged them, she shivered with delight, a giggle floating out of her like a bubble and bursting with a gasp as he closed his mouth around her nipple and sucked on it, circling his thumb on the other. He changed his speed up and down, his tongue sometimes flickering like a flame and sometimes lapping her subtly with just the tip. The pleasure coursed through her, her clit tingling wildly and her abdomen heating, her tender skin flaring like the fireworks. 

Petals began to tumble from the ends of her hair. Hades felt them brush his hands on her back and raised his head and opened his palms, catching them in a pink puddle. He brought them round to her front and grinned at her with mirth.

Persephone giggled and shrugged. “At least it’s not butterflies.”

Hades’ laughter boomed. He lifted his hands and sprinkled the petals over her breasts and nuzzled them away, nipping them between his teeth and grazing her skin, gathering a few in his lips and puffing them onto her face. She squealed and snuffled and bounded forward to throw her arms around his neck. She held him a long moment of utter, perfect joy. His body pressed to hers, her softness against his sculpt, the warmth and ease and comfort, his clean, masculine scent. She stroked his hair. He kissed her shoulder. She pulled back and let her eyes rove over him. He was unbelievably handsome. She could feel herself blushing to the point it was just silly. He was angular in a way that drew the eye around his body, his muscles were etched lightly under his skin, the rich colour of the sky in Autumn, as if dyed with woad. The net of scars around his body, like cobwebs on a dewy morning, gave him the look of a sturdy hawthorn tree. His nipples were the blue-black of juniper berries and tempted her tongue just as much. His hips were much narrower than his shoulders, the breadth of his chest and the subtle slope of his pectorals as inviting as a bed the night the sheets are changed. His hair was thick and silken and the colour of cappuccino foam, a little too fly away for such a serious soul. His face was like carved sapphire, but his lips were forget-me-not petals. It made sense. He might be the most memorable kisser in the realms. His long arms coiled back around her and his sly smile under the ridge of his skull mask sent a marvellous shiver through her core. Between them, his cock was midnight blue and thick. It stood from his white hair, occasionally kissing her belly and making her ripple. 

She sucked her lip and lowered her mouth to his throat. She kissed the smooth skin adoringly, finding the slightest hint of roughness where he shaved. She sewed kisses all around his neck, his cheek, his collar. He moaned low in his chest and his head fell back, his hands running up and down her back and rippling her flesh.

_ Ask him if he likes it. Like you’re telling him he should. _

“Do you like this?” Persephone whispered in his ear, sultry and sly.

Hades shuddered. It was wonderful between her thighs and against her nipples.

“I like this, Sweetness.” He husked, his hands travelling to her ass and giving her a gentle pinch. “I like this more than I’ve liked anything in millennia.” 

_ Tell him you’re going to make him yours. _

“I’m going to make you mine.” 

Hades’ breath flowed out of him in a yearning sigh. “Oh, Persephone, I think you already have.”

It flowed into her. She felt rejuvenated. Her tongue tingled for his taste. She slid down on his lap and took up her tracing kisses again, leaving a glisten from her hot, wet mouth along his chest. She trailed her lips over his heart and felt it beating quicker against her lips. She stole to his nipple and nicked it with her teeth, smiling at his gasp, then sucking on it, delighting in the faint salt of his body, in the suppleness of his skin, in the way his fingers danced and squeezed around her ass as he groaned softly in satisfaction. She ran her hands around his torso, traversing him, discovering him, learning him for later. The thought of that made her smile, bright and beaming. She bobbed back up and pressed her lips to his. He chuckled into her mouth and returned her kiss passionately. He stroked his hand to her breast and cupped it and teased the nipple. Her clit felt momentarily almost pierced.

“Hades.” She sighed. “I know not everything at once. But maybe a little bit of something?”

His mask knocked on hers as he nuzzled her playfully. “Is this not a little bit of something?”

“I want your hands on me.” A moan leaked into her voice. “Please. I’m aching and wet and I just want your touch.”

Hades shuddered again. He ran his fingers into her hair. “You promise you want that?”

“I promise. I want it so much.”

“Well.” There was a sumptuous wickedness in his voice. “I did say you could have anything you want.”

They sank into a deep, sensuous kiss. He kept the hand on her breast working softly, she could feel him taking joy in her flesh. His other hand he dusted along her belly and placed carefully to her pussy. As his fingers lined her labia, she almost choked on the bolt of pleasure shooting up her.

“Sweet Tartarus.” He whispered. “You are wet.”

Persephone nodded vigorously and dragged him to her lips. Their mouths locked and he started to explore her sensitively with his fingers. His touch weaved around her folds and left a trail of lust and feeling that turned her into a puzzle box of pleasure. He alternated between precise, gentle searches with his fingertips, and confident cupping with his palm, massaging her with the heel of his hand and teasing her seam with his fingertips, summoning a hot spring from her body. She trembled and pushed it into her muscles, thrusting into his touch to encourage it harder and faster. He resisted resolutely, moving over her and around her methodically and maddeningly. She felt her breath draining away, her whole body felt dislocated, as if she might fall apart like a mannequin with the bolts loose. But it was the best kind of falling apart. This was like nothing in all the realms. How was this sin? This was power and prayer and perfection.

“Does this feel good?” He murmured against her cheek.

“Hades…” She breathed, quivering against his hands. “You have no idea…”

“Oh, Persephone…”

She began to rock her hips with vigour. She clasped the back of his neck and rode his touch like a rowboat on a storm. Her palm suddenly felt empty. She dropped her hand between them and closed it on the tip of his cock. 

Hades moaned hoarsely. “Holy Hot Coals. Miss Kore, you cannot fathom what your touch does to me.”

She sucked on his lower lip hard, watching it snap back and bloom midnight, as she released it. “Guess I better find out then.”

Hades threw his head back and moaned fervently to the sky, as she set on him, imagining Aphrodite’s hand over hers, guiding her in the clever motions that spun and whisked and worked his nerves and his blood the same way she delicately teased vines and bulbs to life. She rolled his balls, pumped him, tickled his tip, went slow and hard and fast and light. All the while, he fought to keep his fingers on her steady, unspooling sensation from her like a cotton bobbin. The pleasure cascaded through her and looped back for redoubled intensity as she heard his moans and felt his cock swell and pulse. They sped up, fucking each other’s hands, clawing at each other frantically with their free fingertips, leaving white oval prints like petals. 

“Oh Gods… Oh Gods… Hades…”

“Persephone, I can’t take much more.”

“Me neither.”

He slowed a little, which only made her crush her pussy to his fingers. He pecked her lips. “Have you ever come before?”

She felt hot on the back of her neck, beads of sweat rolled down her spine and her ass slapped on his thigh. “Not really.” She was too turned on to be worried about admitting these things now. “Small things myself, but not with another person, and I’ve never… Oh! Oh, I’ve never felt like this.”

“OK.” He kissed her softly again. “Just relax into it, Sweetness.”

She nodded. She sank back as he slid his hand from her breast, now glazed with sweat from the heat between them, and cradled her back, twisting his fingers into the ends of her hair. She could feel something building, something powerful, something enticing, something ferocious. She thrust into his hand and forgot her choreography on his cock, just pumping him rapidly. Thrills coursed through her at his harsh, rising moans. Her clit was violently tender, his fingertips going in racing circles on the peak, sending thuds of lust through her, a suckling sound coming from her drenched seam as it was jostled with the motion. She heard herself cry out, her voice high and savage. She was burning at the roots of her hair, her nipples were on fire, her thighs chafed, her heart pounded. She tipped her head back and was dazzled with sparkle. 

“Hades… I’m… It’s…”

“Fuck, me too…”

They harmonised, moaning each other’s names as if all other words had fallen out of language. Their cries escalated, echoed in the stars.

“Hades!”

“Persephone!”

“Oh!”

“Yes!”

“YES!”

“Say my name one more time.”

“Oh, Gods, Hades!”

“Fuck!”

“Say mine!”

“Persephone!”

She screamed into the stars. Her body was consumed in fire and water and lightning. She shattered. She felt wings in a torrent under her skin. She seized Hades’ hard chin and clamped her mouth to his and earthed herself furiously. 

_ Don’t leave him.  _

A bolt went through her fingers on his cock and he groaned long and luscious into her mouth. Hot, sticky fluid erupted over her fingers. With his release, she felt herself drift from the wild high. The wings calmed. She let out a breath as if her soul was leaving her body. She collapsed onto his chest, bobbing on its rise and fall.

“Damn.” He panted, wrapping her tight in his arms. “I actually got to thinking the butterflies would be pretty hot.”

She laughed and rubbed her face on his misty skin.

“I was right about one thing, though.” He husked. “I really could just live between your thighs.”


	9. Fairy Lights: Falconer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermes lures Eros into his group. It takes very little persuasion.

Hermes rolled in the grass like a puppy in a muddy puddle. Daphne and Ampelus were curled either side of him, peppering his neck and chest and face in kisses and twining their fingers with his to keep him from tickling them, as he had been doing very cheekily moments before. His body was popping candy, his hair was wild, his heart cantered and his wings whipped his calves. He snatched Daphne’s lips with his and laughed into her mouth as she sighed like a movie star. She shoved his chest, smacking free of him, and glared at him with bright cheeks, but he only laughed harder. He could feel his body tipping over the edge, into real chaos, into unstoppable, runaway train territory. He blinked himself steady and scrambled free of the girls to his feet. 

“Hermes!” Daphne whined. “What are you doing?”

“I’ll be right back.” He said, his smile barrelling into his cheeks, seizing the muscles of his jaw.

“Where are you going?”

“Well, you know what they say.” Hermes flexed his ankles, ready to fly. “Two’s company, three’s a crowd, four’s a party.” 

The girls exchanged a quizzical look.

“Right back.” Hermes assured them. 

He rocketed into the air. He zoomed to the suspended figure of Eros, watermelon wings spread cruciform, his open shirt and tie blowing in the breeze and his ruby eyes roving around the scene below. Hermes beamed as he drew closer and looped to rise up to Eros’ back. Eros' broad shoulders were illuminated by moonlight and his feathers were thread-fine sketches across the large, white face. Hermes sprang to snuggle against the soft, delicate feathers bursting from Eros’ back and hugged his middle.

Eros rolled his head back. There was a scrumptious magenta blush on his cheeks and his eyes were somewhere between drunk and penetrating. “Hey.” He sighed low, his shoulders settling against Hermes. “Flying high, Cherry Pie?”

Hermes splayed his fingers and stroked around the soft contours of Eros’ exposed abs. “I think it's running on rails now, Strawberry Shortcake.”

Eros purred coyly. “I don't know, I should really keep an eye on it.”

“No.” Hermes bobbed up and ran his tongue around Eros’ ear. “You should partake in the fruits of your labour.” He gave him a sharper lick. “And this fruit is really fuckin’ ready for pluckin’.”

Eros’ laugh reverberated in his whole body and ruffled his wings, tickling Hermes’ enlivened skin. He shrugged Hermes off and swooped beneath him, pulling him by his forearms so Hermes toppled in the air and landed sprawled on his broad chest. Eros pecked his lips and Hermes blinked dizzy.

“How about we stay up here?” Eros murmured, his mouth in a pretty crescent and the shimmer on his eyes catching the starlight.

He teased the small of Hermes’ back, over his kidney. Hermes wriggled and felt his cock thrum. He almost gave in, but replied with a thick, rueful chuckle. “As much as I really, really want to fuck you in the air above a divine orgy, I got us a couple of nymphs and I'd hate to disappoint them.”

Eros beamed and nudged his nose to Hermes’. “That would be tragic.”

“Bad orgy etiquette, for sure.”

“OK.” Eros pecked his lips again. “I guess the two of us can fuck in the air anytime.” He nipped his nose.

Hermes groaned. “Oh Holy Cattle Rustlers, you promise?”

Eros laughed heartily, bouncing Hermes on his belly. “Promise.”

They kissed heatedly, knotting together in the air, almost spinning upside-down as Hermes clambered on Eros to wrap him tight. Eros rolled Hermes off him with a snuffling, reproachful grunt and, hand in hand, they fell like blossom back to earth. As they landed, Hermes broke instantly into a run. His heart sped so fast he wasn’t even sure if it was beating anymore or if it was just one long, continuous hum.

The plan was working. He could feel it. The elation, the relief, the curiosity, the surrender, the forgetting, the forgiving, the throwing it all away. It throbbed through the park, through Olympus itself. The plan was working.

The two of them careened through the wilderness and into the little alcove in the trees draped with a picnic blanket and filled with the firework sparkles. The sparkles whirled around Daphne and Ampelus, cuddled together and kissing indulgently, their clothes discarded and their long ears perked up. 

Eros let out a low, impressed whistle and pulled Hermes into his arms, curling round his back and nuzzling his cheek. “You bad, bad boy.” He said silkily.

Hermes slithered in the heat of Eros’ embrace. He dropped his head to open his neck, Eros taking the bait immediately and Hermes’ skin setting alight all over again.

“Ready for that chaos?” Hermes murmured.

Eros’ hands stole to Hermes’ belt buckle. “Ready for that bliss?”


	10. Fairy Lights: In the Air Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A scenic tour of the party, revisiting the groups and picking up where we left off, as things get wetter and wilder.

You would think Olympus had never been civilised. You would think it was the end of the world tomorrow. The park became a river of bodies, moans and sighs and oaths and curses and blessings skimming along it like pebbles. Humidity sizzled in the air, that and the delirium of pink making the atmosphere dense and dizzying. Clothes were strewn like leaves after a hurricane. The din of drinking and gambling and dancing sank into the din of smacking flesh and squelching juices, raw, ragged panting and pleading cries for more. The earth itself took on the fragrance of sweat. The trees groaned with the thunderous driving of bodies into the ground and against their trunks. Desserts drooped and pooled in their glowing glasses, turning to rainbow froth in the high heat. The shadows flowed satin on undulating, cascading flesh and muscle and jutting bone.

Artemis grasped the ropes of a swing she had settled onto, hanging from the tree shadowing her, Hecate and Athena. The flowers spiralling up it tickled her knuckles and the moonlight seeped through the leaves and washed her in milk. Hecate knelt up before her, her sleek bob ducking up and down between Artemis’ thighs as she gorged on her pussy. Hecate arched her spine and spread her legs and rocked her hips as Athena lounged behind her and eased three thick, skilful fingers in and out of her seam, deep and firm, revolving and curling to drive her desire. Her other hand massaged Hecate’s swollen clit, Hecate moaning into Artemis’ flesh with every rhythmic strum, as if she were a harp. 

Hecate serpentined her tongue, devouring Artemis as Artemis’ knees floated up and parted wider and wider, hanging back off the swing with her hair falling in a lush, black curtain at her back. She ground fiercely on Hecate’s lips, begging for her tongue in a stream of unintelligible moans. Athena watched them both with a warm, gentle expression, her muscles mounding as she worked Hecate like molten bronze, like she was forging a weapon.

Hecate’s flesh became a nest of salamanders, all slithering flame. Ruler of Night, Queen of Darkness, Sorceress, Seeress. Now she let the night rule her, served the darkness, fell under the spell of skin on skin, saw no future beyond the desperate desire to take this wild goddess over the edge and swallow her shakes and her juices as the warrior working her to madness wielded her pleasure and brought about her ruin. This was what magic meant, this earthy, savage, hungry spell-casting that the three of them weaved in a tapestry of taste and touch and tantalisation. Artemis’ wetness was a potion pouring into Hecate as Athena’s hands stirred the cauldron of her body. She surged and calmed, surged and calmed, in galloping waves of pleasure and temptation that threatened to sweep her away. She writhed her pelvis around Athena’s steady, studious touch. She plunged into Artemis and moaned at her moan, chuckled at her gasping laughter. The sounds of the undergrowth scuffed and scuttled beneath the coursing sighs of pleasure between them. 

The fireworks stained the moonlight pink, dripping strawberries smeared on vanilla. 

Hecate braced herself against a rising stampede of pleasure.

_Something wicked this way comes..._

Amphitrite steadied herself on Poseidon’s marked chest, slippery from the ice cubes, and lifted off him an inch to let him breathe. His furious panting buffeted her pussy, making it scream with sensation.

“I…” He coughed. “I didn’t think I was supposed to be able to drown.” 

“You need me to move?” She asked.

He grinned and squeezed her thighs. “Literally fucking never.”

She felt a stream of bubbles in her blood and settled back into the saddle of his upper lip. She rode his tongue like a river rapid. It flailed and flogged her flesh, her heartbeat pounding in her pussy and her throat raw from gasping with the pleasure. She locked eyes with the nymph sliding her breasts up and down his cock. Trailed her gaze over his body and its coral reef of tiny, perfect details you had to have been together for an age to notice. Between her gushing lust and his drenching mouth, they were creating a whole new sea between them. It boiled her alive.

“I’m gonna come in your mouth.” She hissed. “Hard.”

Poseidon spoke thickly, his tongue tangled and his lips numbing. “How many times?”

 _Good boy._ She scraped his chest with her fingernails. “As many times as I damn well please.”

He trembled beneath her and she felt like Cetus taming the ocean.

“Oh My Gods, I love you so much.” He breathed, tickling her cruelly.

She shoved her clit deeper. “You’re doing an awful lot of talking. Get that tongue back to work, Mister.”

Poseidon wrenched her down by her thighs. Whatever obedient reply he made was smothered in her body and reverberated in her abdomen.

She loved how much he loved her, it was by far her favourite thing about him. “Oh, Sweetie Squid.” Her hair tumbled around her face and fins as she briefly bent to kiss his belly button, then the lips of the nymph submerging his cock. “Hook, line and sinker.”

Poseidon mumbled in agreement and sucked her desire down his throat.

Hera could barely tell where her body ended and Zeus’ began. They hadn’t been this close in centuries. They lay on their sides in the grass, their legs entwined like rose stems, their arms enclosing each other and their fingers combed into each other’s hair. Their lips sealed together and they kissed rapturously. She couldn’t feel if he was moving inside her or if she was driving his cock, they thrust and twisted in exact synchronicity, the soft sound of his cock sliding in her giving flesh was a hypnotic beat for the dance. 

Zeus untangled one hand from her hair. It roamed gradually down her body, taking a leisurely route that captured every inch of her with a stroke or a squeeze or a light, irreverent slap, leaving a smouldering trail along her wanting skin. She always slapped him back, on his chest or his flexed bicep, her hand instantly splaying over his muscle and enjoying its firmness and its shape.

When his hand found her thigh, he hooked it over his hip. He gripped the underside, just above the crook of her knee, and pulled it high, stretching her seam, opening her wider so he could plunge deeper. He rocked them to an angle with his body lifted more off the ground, pushed her thigh to her torso and impaled her, sliding so deep it rang like a bell in her whole body. She arched her spine and grit her teeth and moaned from her belly. She cast back into the grass, her arms flung above her head and her hair flowing out into the buttercups like melted toffee. 

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes!”

Zeus snarled and gripped her knee so hard it hurt. She revelled in the pain, in the coarseness of the soil, in the knowledge she was smearing her precious skin with dirt, in the way his hair swept over her and his teeth grit ferociously and his cock ploughed into her, bestial and taking and fabulously, refreshingly unceremonious. He was still being too gentle, she was still his queen. She needed to be cast into the slums, to have her crown snapped and her body ravaged. 

She caught his eyes fiercely. “Pull my hair.” 

Zeus nodded, his torso rippling with his speedy, powerful thrusts. He slid his free hand through the soil and seized her hair at the roots, streaking the spun gold with dirt, clenching his fist so his bicep mounded and a sharp sting went through her scalp and down her spine.

“Like this?” He whispered.

“Harder.”

He twisted his fist. She burned and moaned wildly. 

“Fuck, Hera, you’re such an animal.”

“Me?” She cooed. “I’m just a little bunny rabbit. Aren’t you supposed to be a big, scary lion?”

Zeus’ breath caught.

“What would something like you do with something like me, out in the wild?”

Zeus moaned hoarsely in his throat. Her hip ached with the force of him pushing her thigh up. 

“Don’t you want to make a meal out of me? Don’t you want me for your whims and will?”

Zeus glared at her golden body, his breath erratic and his thrusting getting faster as his want coiled tighter at his core. “You are incredible.”

“No.” She writhed beneath him, purposefully drawing his eye around her sculpted curves. “I’m just a body. Treat me like a body. We’re strangers tonight.”

Zeus grasped her hair again and the last of her speech petered into a whining moan that made him growl and pounce, coming over her properly, pinning her to the ground and sliding his hand to grab her thigh and use it to pull himself deeper still. Their flesh clapped and their breath heaved in unison.

“OK, Stranger.” He husked. “Shout for me. I want to hear you loud and crass and dirty.”

Hera held his gaze with her lip jutting and her teeth in a snarl. She clapped her hands over his fist in her hair and crushed his fingers so he was forced to grip her hair so hard it felt like he might tear it. 

She moaned brazenly out to the night. “Fuck me! Harder! Faster! I’m a dirty, little bunny, put me in my place. Oh! Ruin me! Just give me your fucking cock!”

Zeus burst into wild laughter. He ripped his hands from her thigh and hair and grabbed the grass either side of her face and threw himself into kissing her and driving her into the earth. She flung her arms around him and clasped him between her thighs and crossed her ankles at the small of his back and moaned over and over into his mouth as he pummelled the pleasure into her. Their bodies chafed and struck and turned to crashing thunder.

When Aphrodite bound Ares it did one of two things to him: utterly subdued him until he became a dreamy, malleable mess, or whipped his blood up, making him frantic and dangerous, like a cornered animal. Tonight, he was the beast. For as long as she could bear, she teased him and riled him with his hands restrained away from her and his mouth stoppered by the nymph’s panties and his eyes burning almost as hot as the growl in his throat. Then, when she was so mad for his touch that she could barely distinguish between her skin and the heat of the Summer air, she unleashed him. The second the tie loosened on his wrists, he spat the panties onto the floor and pounced on her and the nymph with a snarl, his mighty arms scooping them both up in a hail of laughter. She squealed in delight and cast herself into the torrent of his raw, aggressive want.

He’d turned the tables on her with a grin like a wolf under his red hound mask. Now she was tied as he was, her back against the pole and her wrists at the small of her back. Ares held her around his hips, burning her back against the metal as he drove rhythmically into her, his cock moving slow and sure and sultry, like a honey spoon, his teeth and tongue snacking on her neck. The nymph draped herself along the pole at Aphrodite’s side. One cool hand slipped into her bound ones and interlaced their fingers. Her other hand drew up and down her own topaz-gem clit, then stroked Aphrodite’s cheek. Aphrodite’s head lolled as she sighed with swishing, sweeping pleasure and sucked the nymph’s fingers, the light, salty spice moreish. The nymph gurgled with satisfaction and swung on the pole lazily to kiss her deeply, then to kiss Ares, who received her with a gruff, hungry moan.

He pulled away, nipping her lip. “Don’t get cocky, Gorgeous, you’re next.”

“Mmmmm.” The nymph sighed low against his lips. “You promise?”

She dragged her fingernails down his spine and he serpentined, twisting in Aphrodite so she lost her breath. He slid out of her, making her whine and wriggle as her feet touched back to the platform. He dropped to his knees. He clutched Aphrodite’s thigh with one hand and the nymph’s with the other and tucked into their pussies in gluttonous cycles, circling his tongue on the nymph, lapping Aphrodite, sucking the nymph, searching Aphrodite. Aphrodite’s pupils yawned wide and rosy as she watched him dine on them, wheeling between them like a hunting buzzard. Her body burst to life every time he lashed her, yearned and thrummed every time she gazed at the nymph’s writhing, lithe body and her hard bite on her lip. She struggled in her bonds and leaned to the nymph and they kissed joyously, their tongues twining in a mimicry of Ares’ spiralling, delving licks. 

Ares stood again with his mouth smeared with their shine and his eyes sparkling. He wrenched the women apart by their hair. He pressed a firm, domineering kiss to the nymph, then jealousy assailed Aphrodite’s lips. His kiss robbed her of her breath and set her heart whirring. He hoisted her back around his waist and pierced her deep and began to fuck her again, faster and rougher. The nymph slipped her hand between their grinding bodies and pressed her fingers to Aphrodite’s clit. Aphrodite’s flesh cried out for release. The deep, aching joy and the javelining tease gripped her guts and her legs and her chest in sensation. She felt a geyser building in her body, ready to erupt. Her hair stuck to her face and shoulders, the metal scraped her back, her fingers writhed. The nymph stepped to her back, still pleasuring her, and tucked her clit into the willow-branch wave of Aphrodite’s fingers. Aphrodite sighed as her touch met wet, voluptuous folds and she pushed all her quivering, desperate energy into stirring the nymph’s flesh and revelling in her moans in her ear. The nymph trembled and thrust against her hands and pressed harder on her clit. Aphrodite cried out.

Ares scooped her with one huge, strong hand and seized the nymph’s wrist, giving her a severe look. “Edge her.” He commanded.

The nymph smiled and eased off, fluttering her fingers wickedly.

Aphrodite was washed with wonderful frustration. She pouted with large, loving, pleading eyes at Ares’ hard, hot stare. “Honey Bear, whyyyy?”

Ares chuckled darkly and bit her chin, then the vixen snout of her mask. He answered in that ravenous, gravelly, taunting husk that drove her to distraction. “Because, Foxy Lady, we’ve been together for entire centuries and I am the fucking god of near death experiences, and somehow edging you is still the most exhilarating thing to me in all the realms.” 

Aphrodite shivered and moaned, her spine felt like it could split, her legs were pudding, she was so hot she was sure there would be nothing but cinders of her in the next minute. She breathed the scents of Ares’ masculine musk and the nymph’s heady tang of hairspray and samphire. 

She closed her eyes.

Hades smiled around Persephone’s fingers as she slipped a square of lavender marzipan into his mouth. The fragrance filled his senses then crumbled away to sweet almond. He washed it down with a deep draught of dark wine and gazed at the Little Goddess reclining on the chaise with her dainty feet in his lap. Her butterfly mask moved its wings a little on her round face, casting a kaleidoscope of pink shadows in her eyes that hypnotised him, perhaps even more than her captivating body. She lay naked before him. Her ample, glowing plumpness reflected the bubblegum shimmer in the air and the glimmers of ruby through her wine glass. Her hair was swept over the curling arm of the chaise, still littered with petals. He bent forward to put his glass in the grass and leaned back comfortable on the couch. He picked up her foot and stroked his fingers over it, circling his thumbs in the sole and working her heels with the heel of his hand. Even the skin of her feet was soft and supple. She sighed and it oozed down her exquisite form like syrup. His eyes hovered around her like dragonflies around water lilies.

“You’re staring.” She said with a twinkle in her eye.

Hades smiled and tickled her foot, her giggle warming his cheeks. “Yes, I’m staring. If I spend the rest of eternity staring at you I will consider it time well spent.”

Persephone’s lips bloomed in a smile that stopped his heart. 

He took a deep, content breath. “It’s very frustrating, you know.” He said with a black coffee smoothness. “I can either sit back and drink you in, or I can gather you close and eat you up. I would very much like to do both at once.” 

Persephone beamed, then popped her nose into her wine and looked at him coyly over the brim. “Well, you’re the god of banking, you know people can’t spend everything all at once.” 

He grinned. “As the god of it, I really think I ought to be exempt.”

Persephone tutted and shook her head and prodded his lap with her toe. He caught her foot again and went back to massaging it, running his hands up her calves and smiling at the way every shape of her nestled so perfectly into his palms. She dropped her head back and closed her eyes, her breasts swelling with her sighs. He hadn’t just sat naked with someone in an age, hadn’t felt someone react to his softest touch like this for as long as he could remember.

He gazed at Persephone and let his mind drift. The two of them were cupped in the sounds of the party, the chorus of pleasure and pleading, the hushing and drumming of skin on skin, the glug of alcohol being poured and the rustle of the breeze through leaves and abandoned garments. He took in the collage of encounters laid out around them, the drugging, sweet, zingy, earthy scents in the air, the humidity forming clouds of steam and dew along the lush grass and opulent flowers. Life. After an eternity among the dead, subsumed by darkness and the eerie shimmer of shades, haunted by their monotonous mourning and the clink of cold coins, Hades was among the living. Hades was alive.

The centaur draped in the harpy’s lap emitted a series of half-horse, half-human noises that could only be described as distressing as she spanked his rump with a salad-serving spoon. The harpies mating like eagles overhead had taken up a pirouetting pas de deux. The sunflower nymph bartender sat on the counter and spread his legs and gulped from the ladle of a bright green punch bowl as the cyclops gobbled his gin-soaked cock. A pale green dryad perched on a spiralling oak branch and smiled as a centaur stood below her and kissed her dangling feet adoringly. The stilt walkers were at it hammer and tongues in the grass, grunting like sows, their costumes in shreds and their stilts rattling together. Another dryad braced her hands on her tree and squealed in delight as a pot-bellied satyr pistoned into her and a silver siren knelt in the space between her and the tree and lapped at her clit like she was teasing the pearl from an oyster. Two ifrits reclined on a low couch and blew streams of black smoke into each other’s mouths. The greedy satyr at the dessert table pinned the pumpkin nymph by her wrists and thrust into her as she bucked her hips, whipped cream matting in his thick chest hair and a bunch of grapes caught on his horn. They all growled and huffed and screamed and sighed, burned and ached and stung and shivered and felt as if they might shatter into pieces. They soaked the dry ground. They tore the bark with their fingernails. They stirred the magma at the centre of the earth.

Alive and alert and beyond his senses, tumbling backward into a braid of bodies, Eros felt it all.


	11. Fairy Lights: Bliss and Chaos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermes, Eros, Daphne and Ampelus, and a very messy picnic blanket.

Eros’ wings spread in the daisies like a mass of budding primroses. He felt his muscles turn to butter as he relaxed into the warm, giving ground and three beautiful bodies sank to his. Daphne cuddled his head and pulled him into a delicious kiss, her warm breasts bunching on his collar and her raspberry lip gloss so sweet he couldn’t help but smile and shift their kiss to suck on her lip. Ampelus reached over him to stroke Daphne’s skin and padded her lips to his nipple, teasing him gleefully. Hermes, the minx, reclined on his front and flickered his fiery tongue across Eros’ thighs and abs and hips, going everywhere except his tingling cock and chuckling smugly every time Eros writhed or tilted to try to coax his lips that final inch. Eros curled one strong arm around Daphne and draped the other around Ampelus, drawing his fingers along her spine and enjoying the ripple he could feel in her vertebrae at his touch. 

Hermes’ tongue danced closer and closer to his cock, the trail of his saliva scalding, then cooling to an infuriating tickle. Then suddenly Eros was cold. Hermes tore from him, lunged up his side, grabbed Daphne by the hip and rolled her from his lips. Hermes scooped her pert, pretty ass as her legs tumbled wide and dove to her clit, snaking his tongue on her and swallowing the force from the buck of her hips. She raked her hands into her cherry-taffy locks and sighed high, laughter skimming along her breath. 

Eros grumbled like a labrador and pushed up on his elbows. “Oh, sure, you’ll go down on her, you fickle thing.”

Hermes peeked at him from Daphne’s neat, pink curls and waggled his tongue on her with a wink. She moaned and Eros beamed and kissed her cheek, then gave himself to the tease on his shoulders as Ampelus began to stroke them with her fingertips. He rolled onto her, into her apple and incense scent, and closed her in his arms. There was something so comfortable about her body. She nestled beneath him and it was the same feeling of relief and relaxation as sinking into a hot, scented bath. He’d thought she was pretty ever since they’d met, and his affection had only grown as she’d shown her kindness to his family. But tonight, there was something else about her. Her hot skin the colour of deep space, her eyes dazzling gold, her hair streaming in the grass and bleeding out into the earth. She was agonisingly beautiful. He hadn’t felt someone’s beauty this keenly since…

_Not tonight, Dummy, just focus on them._

Ampelus slipped her hands down his back and over his ass, tickling the spot just under the cup of his cheek. He burst into bubblegum giggles and she cackled with a sound that rang strangely in his ears.

_How did she know how ticklish I am there?_

She snuggled against him, her teeth bright in her naughty smile, and kissed his chin. She combed her fingertips along his back and around the track of his ribs to his chest. People didn’t usually touch Eros so lightly. They saw his size and they knew his profession and assumed he wanted something intense and pressing, or else they just thought his body should be able to take whatever they felt like doing. But he liked to be handled gently, he liked being teased and caressed and treated with care. Ampelus seemed to sense it in him, seemed to know his body already. Her fingers danced over his skin like skaters on a frozen lake, as if working from a map of his needs and his ticks and his secret sensitivities. She kissed his neck exactly where it prickled, she kissed his cheek where it summoned his blush, she scooped her hips so her pussy grazed the tip of his cock, she stroked along the frame of his wings and helped him ease them out from their crinkle, as he heaved a slow breath to contain his desire.

“You’re so stunning, Eros.” She whispered.

Eros smiled down at her. He laid his lips petal-soft on the hollow of her throat and stirred tenderly with his tongue. She sighed and traced her fingertips to his nipples and matched his circling pace. He moaned and it hummed on her skin. 

“Oh Gods, Hermes, yes!” Daphne tangled her fingers in Hermes’ wild hair and wrenched him into her pussy as he gorged on her, his shoulder blades flapping with his panting. 

Eros and Ampelus glanced towards the cry and exchanged an amused look. Eros kissed her cheek and slipped from her. He stood and stepped to Hermes and picked him up by his shoulders. Hermes peeled off Daphne with a mutual whine of reluctance and he struggled in Eros’ firm grip, crinkling his nose in protest.

“You’re rushing, Hermes.” Eros murmured.

“But she tastes really, really good.” Hermes pouted.

“And she will taste better if you take your time.”

“I dispute that.”

“He’s right.” Daphne sat with her legs spread and her pussy gleaming deliciously. “I definitely taste at my best now, like right now.” 

Hermes tried to pull from Eros’ clasp. “You heard the lady!”

Eros rolled his eyes. “This had better not be like herding cats.”

He steered Hermes, staggering as he struggled, and pinned his back to an apple tree, looking into his flare-gun eyes. He looked about him and saw Ampelus stood beside him with a playful grin and his pink tie laid across her open hand.

Eros smiled and raised his eyebrows behind his black lace mask. “How’d you know?”

Ampelus shrugged. Eros took the tie, tickling her palm as he did. He plucked Hermes’ wrists. Hermes gave a show of resistance, but he was docile from the soporific effect of Daphne’s dreamy body. Eros lifted Hermes’ crossed wrists overhead and looped the tie around a dipping branch, binding Hermes’ hands in a bunch of red apples.

Hermes ground his teeth at him. “What’s this for?”

“I’m slowing you down.”

Hermes groaned and swung about from the tie. An apple was jostled free and thudded in the grass between them. Ampelus hugged Eros from behind and nuzzled his feathers, then dropped to all fours and crawled to Daphne, smiling mischievously under her impassive bronze mask. The flowers crowding Daphne’s face rippled and she let Ampelus press her into the daisies, gathering Ampelus’ silken hair in her hands and kissing her hungrily. Ampelus purred and ran her lips down Daphne’s body, planting a kiss in every bluebell smudge. She whisked her with her tongue. Daphne murmured rapidly and shivered, rolling her cheek into the soil and clipping a daisy between her teeth. 

“See?” Hermes complained. “You aren’t telling Ampelus to slow down.”

Eros shrugged and spread his wings to hide the girls from Hermes. “Tough.”

“You’re supposed to be the nice one!” Hermes squawked, craning his neck to try and see past the veil of pink feathers.

Eros’ teeth crept from behind his lips and his muscles mounded as he put his hands on his hips and drew himself up. “Surprises, remember?”

Hermes’ eyes snapped back to him and the red feathers on his mask bristled. His scarlet eyes with their magenta-glow pupils roamed around Eros’ form. He cocked his head rakishly. “Have I mentioned in the last five minutes how brutally hot you are?”

“Don’t try to get out of this.” Eros said, still smiling. He cupped Hermes’ face and drew him into an indulgent kiss, mixing up his mind with his tongue.

When Eros relinquished him, Hermes felt like his joints had all stopped hanging together. He dropped his head onto his raised bicep and looked at Eros’ warm expression. “How’d you get to be such a good kisser?” 

Eros cocked an eyebrow. “I am professionally a good kisser.”

Hermes laughed, rolling his head back and grinning at the shining apples bumping his hands. “Anything else you wanna do with that mouth while you’ve got me like this?”

Eros chuckled like hot chocolate and took Hermes’ hips in his hands, gliding closer so Hermes’ straining cock nudged his padded abs. “Oh.” He silked. “I could think of a few things.”

Hermes’ body turned into dynamite as Eros swished his wings in a cage around them and set upon him with his mouth. He nibbled his shoulder, slipped his small gold earring between his teeth and tugged, kissed along his chest, sucked his nipples raw, dragged his lips down his flank and lapped his ass, dug the tip of his tongue into the furrow over his hips and flickered it like a jackhammer, sank his teeth into the meat of his thigh. 

“Oh, fuck, Eros…” Hermes writhed in his bonds, the silk of the tie snaking on his wrists. 

As Eros sank to his knees, the veil of his wings fell away and Hermes’ vision filled with the sumptuous sight of Daphne and Ampelus. They knelt on a picnic blanket, Daphne astride Ampelus’ lap and their mouths locked and moving sensuously together. Their hands vanished in the shadows of their bodies, pleasuring each other and rolling their hips into each other’s touch. Daphne’s hair was wild and Ampelus’ fell sleek down her back and met the brush of grass. Hermes’ mouth fell open, watching the way their soft curves moved in gentle waves, then his jaw clenched as Eros’ tongue slid up the inside of his thigh and stopped just below his balls. It danced over his abs and then up and down his other thigh. Hermes ached. His whole body tensed, drawing his torso taut and flexing his bicep so the gold armband bit.

“Eros, I swear to the titans…”

Eros glanced up at him, his eyes smokey rubies through the black lace. “Frustrating, isn’t it?”

Hermes laughed and tossed his hair out of his eyes. “Fuck you, Strawberry Shortcake.”

Eros smiled a startlingly dirty smile. He tilted his head, holding Hermes’ gaze. He slicked his tongue up the shaft of his cock and lapped the tip.

Hermes shivered and broke into a bounding grin. Eros watched his eyes fall back under his mask and felt a tremor of anticipation in his stomach as he raised his head and kissed the tip of Hermes’ cock. It bounced in reply. Eros’ lips gummed with the residue seeping from the tip. He gazed at the thick length, the cherry red making it irresistible. He licked his lips and sucked the salt on his tongue. His heart beat once. He dipped and opened his mouth. 

He covered Hermes’ cock in kisses, kitten-licking around the head and fitting his mouth around the ridge of skin and pecking, delighting in the way Hermes swore and squirmed, shaking the branches. He slathered the shining point with his hot tongue until he could hear Hermes losing his voice with the intensity. Then he extinguished the fire, plunging down, taking the length of Hermes into his mouth and sucking hard. Hermes’ taste wasn’t heavy, but it was spiced with chilli pepper and tingled in Eros’ senses. Eros sighed and moaned with his hunger, sending shudders up Hermes’ body so his cock trembled between his teeth. Hermes filled his mouth, his girth and his restlessness extremely satisfying, mingling in Eros’ body with the silver-bell chime of pleasure and release throughout the park. He cupped Hermes’ balls with one hand and clutched his firm, tight ass with the other and dined on him, a connoisseur. His own cock swelled and ached as Hermes snaked his hips and dragged his cock around Eros’ mouth, trying to retreat when it got too much and groaning as Eros chased him and licked the tip again, lapping up the salt like a puppy. Eros’ wings stirred and he lifted them as he tugged lightly and rhythmically on Hermes’ balls and played around his ass and perineum. The tips of his long, crowning feathers stretched up and brushed up and down Hermes’ torso, abs to nipples. Hermes made a string of helpless noises in his throat as the feathers tickled his body and teased his nipples pip-hard. He arched his spine and wriggled and two more apples thunked down at Eros’ side.

Eros felt softness drape his back and warm, tacky thighs nestle either side of his own. Ampelus sneaked her hands around his abs. He sighed longingly onto Hermes’ cock, the sound thick as the red meat muffled his mouth. Ampelus’ hands massaged his belly, then stole down to his cock. Her fingers curled around him and she began to stroke in a slow, taunting rhythm. Eros moaned as he flooded with pleasure and his tongue vibrated on Hermes’ tip. Daphne laid herself by his side, shot him a glowing look, then bent her head and scattered licks and kisses over the head of his cock, as Ampelus worked his length. He poured the pleasure building in his body over Hermes. Four voices braided in the branches as they murmured and moaned for each other in a cloud of desire and sensation. 

Ampelus and Daphne glanced at each other through Eros’ stirring feathers and nodded. Ampelus looped Eros around the waist and heaved him back. He popped free of Hermes and yapped as he tumbled in a flurry of feathers and Ampelus whipped around him and pinned him on the picnic blanket, the soft wool caressing his back and his wings all crooked and his eyes bewildered. Daphne shot up like a daffodil and threw her arms around Hermes’ neck and kissed him fiercely. He threw himself into her, grinning like a sprite against her lips. 

“Daph, untie me.”

“Why?”

“Because I want my hands all over you. I wanna drive you crazy.”

“Big talk.”

“Try me.”

Daphne giggled and bobbed onto her toes and wrestled with the silk. She tugged it loose and Hermes slipped his hands free, gathered her into his arms and pressed his open mouth to hers passionately, sucking the taste of Eros off her lips. She crushed herself to him, the heat of his body searing her, his cock burrowing into her pussy and kicking up a lightning storm with the friction. They tumbled to the blanket near Ampelus and Eros, catching their rich scents. Hermes landed on all-fours, caging Daphne on her back beneath him. He dived like a swordfish and peppered her with rapid, popping kisses as she squealed and reached up and twisted his nipples. He snapped his teeth at her and wriggled his shoulders like a puma, his eyes and his pixie grin like fireworks. He put his hand to her pussy, sliding instantly in her gleaming juices. 

“Hermes, yes!”

Her cry echoed in Eros’ body and he bolted up and knocked Ampelus backwards with a flash of fuchsia in his pupils. She gasped and scrambled, steadying herself on his broad shoulders as he wrapped her in his sycamore-bough arms. Their pulses thudded once in unison. 

They kissed.

Really kissed.

Passionately, longingly, truly kissed.

Eros knew that kiss. 

He froze. The wonderful, rainbow whirl in his head and his bloodstream rushed away and every fibre of him stilled. And feared. And hoped. He broke from Ampelus’ lips and pulled back. He stared at her. He couldn’t breathe.

She looked steadily into his eyes. She spoke in almost a whisper. “Take off your mask and I'll take off mine.”

Eros swallowed. His heart began to gallop in his chest, bruising his ribs and roaring in his ears. With trembling fingers, he peeled the lace from over his eyes. 

Ampelus caught a shaking sob in her throat as the full beauty of his face was revealed, the mask cuffing his candyfloss quiff and tousling it, his eyes wide and shining and the colour of the sunset on a vineyard. 

She raised her hands to her face and lifted away the bronze mask. As its shadow drew from her face, the hovering fairy lights swirled over her and showered her in sweet, pink light. The deep purple poured from her skin into the darkness, leaving her honey gold. Her hair streaked with copper like the sunrise over a wheat field and her ears flicked and shrank and rounded.

And in Eros' arms was Psyche.

His Psyche.

Eros’ galloping heart stopped. His throat closed. His eyes filled with tears and he blinked them back furiously to keep the sight of her clear.

“Eros.” She whispered. “I’m so sor-”

He kissed her.

Their lips met and the party and the woodland and Hermes and Daphne all fell away and everything in the world, everything in the universe, became that kiss. Where their skin touched they created the same matter that forms the blur between sky and sea, between fire and smoke, between stars and darkness. Tears welled and splashed down their cheeks. They clutched each other so hard their bones threatened to fracture. Their flesh melded and Eros’ wings spread joyfully and fluttered so a wild breeze eddied through the leaves above. 

Psyche freed her lips just enough to speak. “Eros, I wanted to tell you.”

He pursued her mouth ravenously. “Doesn’t matter.”

“And… and everything…”

“It doesn’t matter.” He hugged her desperately. She couldn’t be close enough, nothing could give him enough of her, he wanted to drown in her, he wanted to swim in this elation forever. “Nothing matters. Psyche. My heart. You’re back. You’re back!” His tears trickled to her breasts and turned to steam. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too.” She clasped the back of his neck and kissed him so hard their teeth collided. “Oh Gods, Eros, being close enough to kiss you all this time...”

“Kiss me now. Psyche, Psyche, Psyche. Kiss me now.” 

He pulled kiss after kiss from her lips, frantic and feasting. Their minds reeled with relief and ecstasy and they toppled sideways, crashing into Hermes and Daphne.

Hermes had been leaning over a sprawled, palpitating Daphne and rubbing her clit like he was starting a fire, her leaping cries of lust startling sparrows and finches out of their nests. They yelped as Eros barrelled Hermes over and smothered him in feathers, landing in Daphne’s lap with a honey-skinned mortal woman’s head falling onto Daphne’s belly. They didn’t break their kiss as they winded the pink nymph.

“Who’s that?” Hermes barked, his eyes goggling.

Eros plucked his lips from Psyche’s but didn’t look away from her. “This is her.” He said in a distant, disbelieving voice, a darling smile on his lips. “This is Psyche. My only one.”

“Where’s Ampelus?” Daphne exclaimed.

Psyche burst into teaming laughter and Eros joined her. Their shoulders shook, their hair rippled. They sent jiggling joy up Daphne’s body. 

“Psyche is Ampelus.” Eros said through the laughter, his tears coming fresh, but this time with mirth. “It’s a long story.”

Daphne beamed and joined their laughter. “Another time, then.” She folded over them and burrowed into their closeness and stole kisses from their lips. They received her eagerly, the three of them sinking into a pool of warmth. 

“Whoah, wait up!” Hermes scrambled to them and nosedived into the fray, finding Eros’ mouth and Psyche’s ear and the blush of blue on Daphne’s neck. He shot more laughter through them. They snatched at him with greedy hands, pulled him to their bodies, lavished their tongues on him. The four of them became a torrent of flesh and motion and adoration. They tumbled and rolled and thrust and writhed. Fingers interlaced, hands gripped muscle and pinched fat, teeth gnashed and lips smacked and hair tossed. Their sweat misted the air around them, a dense thicket of perfumes and the sweet salt of arousal. 

Hermes sucked Eros’ cock like a sugar stick. Eros spread kisses like marmalade on the inside of Daphne’s thigh. Daphne nibbled Psyche’s shoulder. Psyche rolled Hermes’ balls in her palm. Hermes spanked Daphne and cuddled her to feel her tremble with the vibrations. Daphne flailed her tongue on Eros’ throat. Eros pressed his lips to Psyche’s brow. Psyche buried her face in Eros’ belly. Daphne dragged her lips down Hermes’ spine and bit his ass. Psyche sucked Daphne’s nipples until her lips were numb and Daphne was speechless. Hermes snaked his tongue on Psyche’s seam, his nose nudging her clit. Eros bunched Hermes’ hair in his hands and tugged a little to make him prickle and slink. Hermes laughed. Daphne squealed. Eros moaned. Psyche sighed. The picnic blanket rumpled and twisted around them.

They wove a chrysalis around themselves, shielding them from everything in the world that wasn’t the overpowering delight of each other’s desire. Their sex was chaotic and controlled, savage and sensuous, agile, restless, relaxed, peaceful. They lost definition, lunged and lurched for kisses and bites and thrusts without always knowing who they could feel, who they could taste, who was driving them to the exquisite, longed-for point of no return. 

Daphne burst from the tumult like a dolphin. She knelt with her thighs spread, leaning back on splayed fingers. She stared up to the dancing lights and gasped for air. Psyche slithered into her lap, drawn to her sweet, red pussy like a bee. She sank to it with soft, yearning lips. 

“Oh!” 

Eros stared adoringly as Psyche’s beautiful, golden-syrup mouth lavished on Daphne’s glossy fruits. He collapsed to her perfect body, tucking to her back, feeling it slot into place against him. He teased her seam with his cock. She moaned musically. He took her encouragement and slid into her with a long, agonisingly happy groan, that she echoed and resonated in Daphne’s body. Hermes slid on his knees to Daphne and she wrapped her fingers around his cock and pumped him as they fell into a messy, deep kiss. 

Eros could feel how close they all were. Hermes’ rampant lust, Daphne’s flowing need, and Psyche’s intoxicating, innocent, tender desire. He spread his wings out behind him to cool his back and he gave himself entirely over to the primal lust at the core of himself. Being close to Psyche again, smelling her, tasting her, being inside her. He couldn’t understand it. Gods were supposed to give blessings, not receive them. How could he be this happy? How could he be this hungry? He thrust gently, but strongly into Psyche, sliding in her wetness, her ass pressed against him deliciously. He reached around her and rolled her nipples like marzipan between finger and thumb and watched Daphne quiver with Psyche’s moans. He nuzzled into her copper hair and breathed her incense scent.

Hermes couldn’t contain his smile. For such a demure girl, Daphne’s tongue was like a moray eel. He sparred with her heatedly and tensed and relaxed his muscles to guide the pleasure from his cock around his body. He could feel the party in his pores. Everyone was doing this. Everyone. They had thrown themselves away. They had surrendered to want and whatevers and dear, marvellous, mighty mischief. Olympus was remaking itself in his image, all impulse and irreverence. _It’s just for tonight,_ he heard them telling themselves, but he knew the call of chaos. It was an ear-worm.

He locked eyes with Eros. Eros’ ruby gaze through his fuchsia blush was tenderly touching. And fucking gorgeous. A thread of flame spun between them. Hermes leaned over and touched his fingertips to Psyche’s clit. As she moaned, Daphne grasped his cock tighter and pumped him harder. He massaged Psyche into a faster rhythm and Eros smiled at Hermes breathlessly and matched him with his thrusts. His hand moved from Psyche’s breast and ran up Hermes’ arm, squeezing under the gold band. Hermes winked at him.

They moved faster and faster together. Their bodies flowing in a current of breathless, wild want. 

“Oh, Psyche!” Daphne gasped.

“Fuck, Daph! Harder!” Hermes threw his head back.

“Gods Eros, how is your cock even better than I remember?” Psyche’s words were thick around Daphne’s pussy.

“Psyche, your body is heaven.” Eros whispered into her hair.

“Hermes, more! Yes!” Psyche pleaded.

“Eros, you look so fucking hot.” Hermes husked.

“I’m so close!” Daphne cried.

She came first. She wailed into the treetops, frightening another family of sparrows. She collapsed in front of Hermes and plunged her mouth over his cock. He laughed and moaned and rolled onto his back, propped on his elbows. He softly rocked his hips into her mouth. She sucked him eagerly, her eyes closed and her mask askew. Her wet, scalding mouth turned his body to fire and he shook all over as he erupted into her mouth and his mercury poured from her lips down his shaft and over his hips onto the blanket. Their climax rushed Eros and he rolled Psyche onto her back, pounced over her, cupped her face and kissed her with all of himself. He revelled in her, moving deeper and deeper, connected to her more intimately than he had ever felt before. She broke from his mouth and he was washed in the familiar, musical sound of the way she gasped at the zenith of her lust. His whole body pulsed and he felt his orgasm like a stampede. He cried out and spasmed and clutched Psyche’s jaw. His brow pressed to hers and his eyes clamped shut. It exploded across his flesh, the feeling of firing an arrow but multiplied by millions. 

Hermes’ release and Eros’ pleasure rolled through the party, the guests surrendering in waves and whirlpools. 

The fairy lights flared, growing brighter and brighter, swelling to the size of paper lanterns and blazing blindingly. They burst in showers of hot sparks.

And vanished.

The party was plunged into darkness.


	12. Afterglow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dawn breaks over the party-goers as they start to stir and greet a new day on Olympus. New feelings, sealed promises, broken oaths, pretty things set free, and troubling forces bound up. Hermes reveals the print on his snazzy boxer shorts, and what he was up to all along.
> 
> Song: [Little Bird, Annie Lennox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbNLVQ_Iwk)

The light of dawn was a cool blue and peach, a soothing balm after the garish, hot sparkle of the night. It laid over slowly stirring eyes like a rejuvenating cucumber mask. It trickled and plumed into the park, swirling into the mist clinging to the grass, like paintbrushes being washed in a water cup. It swished over discarded bottles and squashed cushions, sank into the puddles of melted ice cream, wormed into the creases of scattered clothes, and glimmered softly on the wall of glass behind the bar. 

The centaur and the harpy lay in a tangle of monstrous limbs, their snores echoing sonorously. The bartender chuckled and rubbed the cyclops’ temples as the cyclops groaned through the pounding of his hungover head. The dancing harpies hung upside-down from a tree like bats, their wings folded around them in cocoons that caught the light and shimmered grey. A pile of dryads and satyrs snuggled at the edges of a cluster of silver birches, while a siren reclined back against them and gazed up to the pale sky and hummed to herself. The ifrits breathed slowly and dozed on a blanket, thin wisps of smoke curling from their lips. The pumpkin nymph sat up sleepily and winced at her body, coated in drying cream and sprinkles and halved cherries. She tutted and started to peel away the gummy residue as her satyr companion drooled in her lap.

It was deeply, comfortably, caressingly quiet. 

Hecate lay on the swing, rocking like a cradle as the air awoke into a breeze, her head in Artemis’ lap and her hand folded over her nose, like a sleeping cat. Artemis jerked awake from sitting and leaning her face against the flower-woven swing ropes, her deer skull mask entirely twisted to one side and her cheek plastered with white petals. Athena was already awake and lying nonchalantly on the bench nearby, one foot hooked over the other and her hands behind her head, her biceps bunching. Artemis’ eyes gradually took in the scene. Her memory leaked back into her brain with the cheeping birdsong. She looked down at Hecate, her sapphire skin soft and dusky in the gentle glimmer. 

Artemis warmed. 

“Pssssst.” She hissed at Athena.

Athena nodded her head forward to blink at Artemis, an easy smile lifting onto her lips. 

Artemis mouthed sternly. “Hestia hears NOTHING of this.”

Athena grinned and shot a lazy finger gun. “Gotcha.” 

She flopped back onto her hands. Artemis bit her lip and felt her knees instinctively squeeze together. Worry tinged her mind. There was a pleasant coolness in her flesh as the fresh air lapped her naked body and the trails of kisses from the night before. She took a careful breath, smelling daisies and dew. 

Hecate shifted in her lap. 

Artemis let herself smile, and stroked her hair.

Poseidon became dimly aware of a soft, cool cushion beneath his cheek and the tasty smell of coconut. He rolled onto his back and smiled a dopey smile. Amphitrite cradled his head in her lap, combing his long, kelp-green hair from his face and tickling his scalp with the points of her fingernails. Her hair tumbled like sail cloth in a shipwreck and framed her face, her flint-sharp eyes and her apple cheeks and her dark, sly lips. Poseidon raised his head and she chuckled at the imprint of her scales on his cheek.

“Sleep well, Sweetie Squid?” She cooed.

Poseidon blinked and looked along the craps table he was curled up on. It and the floor around were littered with drowsing river nymphs in various states of undress, cuddling against each other or huffing each other’s hair out of their faces. The morning light glistened on them like smooth pebbles on a beach. Poseidon blinked again and slid his smile back to Amphitrite.

“Am I even awake yet?”

The rainbow glow around the base of the pole-dancing platform was doused by the creamy spill of dawn. Aphrodite was stretched out like a panther with her head rested on Ares’ bundled up trousers. The war god was curled up against her, docile as a kitten, his arms wrapping her waist and his head rested on her breasts, his face nuzzling into her flesh and squashing his nose so he breathed with the sound of a motorbike with a homemade engine. The nymph slept with her head on Aphrodite’s belly, on her back in a crooked starfish, with her hair in a crunchy tangle from her hairspray, a fine thread of saliva drizzling from her open mouth as she snored softly. All three were smeared with glitter from her body and twinkled in the sunrise.

Aphrodite came round in a pleasant haze of their scents - samphire, cologne, musk. She looked up into the sky and its watercolour peach streaks, the same colour as Ares when he tanned. The same colour as Eros when he was born, before he grew into looking more like her. She chortled. 

_Well done, Baby Bear._

She scooped her arm around Ares’ warm, sloping bulk and rumpled his hair.

“Five more minutes.” He grunted without opening his eyes.

She scruffed his hair harder. “Come on, Honey Bear, we told the sitter we'd be home hours ago.”

The nymph snored loudly and snapped awake. She blinked large aquamarine eyes and dragged her hand over her mouth. 

“She's fine.” Ares mumbled. “I showed her how to use the consoles and stocked the fridge.”

“Who’s this?” The nymph rolled onto her front and patted at her frizz.

Ares dragged his body tighter against Aphrodite and replied unintelligibly into her flesh.

“Our sitter.” Aphrodite translated. “It's a long time to leave our kids with a relative stranger.”

Ares finally opened his eyes with a look of deep disgruntlement. He tilted his chin just enough to free half of his mouth. “Our kids outnumber her, Soda Pop, they'll be fine.”

Aphrodite laughed and jostled him on her body. “Yeah, it's her I'm worried about. Come on, up-up-up.”

Ares’ devious chuckle rumbled in his belly and thrummed up Aphrodite’s core. “As you wish.” He slid up her body like a beaching whale, rolled on top of her and crushed her to the floor, the tip of his cock nudging between her thighs. She gasped and laughed, trying to push him off and finding herself completely pinned, as if by falling rock. His tongue sneaked lazily over her neck.

“Well, I should probably…” The nymph began to rise. 

Ares lurched out, grabbed her wrist and pulled her in with a yelp, tucking her under his arm and keeping both women firmly caged as he fell back to drowsing. 

Aphrodite sighed in defeat and rocked her head to meet the nymph’s glittering gaze. The nymph looked softer in the peaceful, steady light, calmed from a surging, flowing stream to a trickling brook. Her nose had a sweet little upturn and there was a tiny gap between her two front teeth. Aphrodite beamed at her and her fins fluttered.

“What’s your name?” Aphrodite asked.

The nymph smiled. “Calypso.”

“Calypso.” Aphrodite tasted the name on her tongue, iced lemonade. “Would you like dinner tonight?”

Calypso smiled brighter, then gave a cheeky, coy shrug. “I can see if I’m free.”

Aphrodite smirked and arched an eyebrow. “Do.”

“Sssh. Sleep time.” Ares grumbled, squeezing them.

They giggled and snuggled into his warmth.

Dove grey smoke drifted across Zeus’ eye line and briefly filled his senses. He hated the smell of cigarettes. He adored the smell of cigarettes.

“Can I have a drag?” 

Hera reached back and hovered her cigarette in front of his mouth. She was leaning back against his chest as he sat against the trunk of an oak. She was wrapped in his shirt, making her look tiny, like a buttercup folded in tissue paper for pressing. Her hair streaked like the pale sunshine over her shoulder. She smelled of grass and sleep. He eased one arm from round her and stroked her thigh with his knuckles as he tipped forward and sucked an enlivening shot of harsh, hot smoke. He blew out in a stream through his nose and teeth. He collapsed back against the tree with a soft groan.

Hera brought her cigarette back to her lips. She hadn’t looked round at him yet. Her free hand was rested on his forearm, lightly, as if she was always about to move her touch away. But her back felt relaxed against him, the perfect curve of her body fitting to the cradle of his. He kept looking at the light on her hair.

“New day.” She said quietly.

He didn’t answer. There was a stillness in his body that he was unwilling to break. She turned in his arm and leaned against his raised thigh and bent knee. She met his eyes, her hard, citrine gaze almost hurting.

“What would you say right now, if you were brave?” She asked it impassively, barely even curious. But she did ask. That must mean something, right?

Zeus felt his heart twist. His curled fingers against her thigh closed into a tense fist. His blood began to run cold and he breathed the hot smoke twizzling from between her fingers to try to stop it, to keep the warmth of last night alive. 

He replied as quietly as her. “That it is a new day. For both of us.”

Her smooth brow creased. The harsh crystal of her eyes melted and turned her bright irises to coins under the water of wishing wells. The corners of her mouth tightened and dropped. Her whisper was silk ribbon, but it cut him deeper than his bone.

“I know when you're lying.”

Zeus felt a surge of sorrow from his stomach. He closed his eyes and dropped his brow to hers. He folded his arms around her and held her for a long, mourning moment. He tried to find the words he needed to make it true, the magic words, the spell to seal the night’s enchantment. His mind was a beehive of lies and plots and mistakes and vendettas, putting his hand into it to dig out the honey always stung. But there was something. One thing he could always find, despite the agony it was just to touch it with his fingertips.

“I love you, Hera.”

Hera sighed long and tired through her nose. Smoke plumed around them and dissipated in the mist.

Persephone tucked the blanket a little closer about her. Hades noticed instantly and brought his arms higher up her body, bringing her safely into his warmth. His hair spilled messily over the chaise cushion and his eyes looked a hundred years younger, wide and wishful.

“You're staring again.” Persephone said, stroking her fingertip over the broad plain of his chest shielding her from the morning cool.

“No.” Hades cocked an eyebrow. “This time I'm gazing.”

“What's the difference?”

“Creepiness to romance ratio.”

She giggled and nuzzled his collar. He smelled of her peach perfume. She smiled, there was a sort of triumph to that, like she was a dandelion in his body, impossible to uproot. Her smile lingered. Every muscle felt like dough, her skin felt cleansed, she hadn’t been so sure of her safety since she was a child in Mama’s greenhouse. Hades had that same contradiction of smooth, sturdy, fragile glass, and tangled, tumbling, curious life.

“We should get up.” She murmured, after a long moment in his arms, listening to his steady breathing.

“I'd rather not.” His low lilt made her quiver in her belly.

“Why?” She peeked up at him.

His eyes were the blue of the horizon. “Because I'm having a very beautiful dream. I'm not ready for it to be over.”

“It is beautiful, isn't it?” She smiled.

He chuckled. “So, we're agreed: stay like this and just make people walk round us?” 

“Sounds good.”

“Yes.”

“Except I'm hungry.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Hey!” She prodded his chest and his deep laugh vibrated in her fingertip.

“Well,” He said with a velvet growl behind his gentle voice. “I learned plenty about your appetites last night.” 

She quivered more, like a flowerbed in a breeze. “Scoundrel.”

“Want to get some breakfast?”

“Yes.”

In this new world, where she had found herself entirely lost, this maze of deceit and secret languages and hidden rules, of mysteries and media and unreadable moments, Hades’ smile was so genuine her heart swelled.

He helped her to her feet and they dressed, half way between shy and reluctant, stealing glances and touches. He zipped her dress up for her and tickled the back of her neck with another wicked growl, as she whispered to him that she had no idea where her panties had got to. He tried to do up his tie and she snatched it from him and tossed it away. If she was going commando, he for sure wasn’t going to breakfast looking sharp.

He looped her arm into his and they wandered from the park, her head resting a few inches above his elbow and the songs of thrushes picking up to the slow beat of their footsteps.

Daphne blinked awake. Her nose tingled with the scents of apple and cherry, vanilla and chilli pepper. Her face was warm and something was rising and falling under her cheek. 

“Morning, Petal.”

Daphne gasped and sat upright, her cheek unsticking from Hermes’ bare chest. He was stretched out like pulled taffy, naked and glistening, his head resting on the padding of Eros’ abs and his hand cast back over his head to rest on Eros’ broad thigh. Eros was sound asleep with his wings spread over the ground, one of them folded around… Psyche? Ampelus? The purple nymph cuddled to his side with her hand possessively on his chest.

Daphne blushed fuchsia.

Hermes grinned and bounced his eyebrows.

“Oh My Gods…” She said distantly, her hand lifting to her lips as she realised it had all been real.

“Sleep well?” Hermes’ grin broadened.

“Y… Yes.” 

She gazed around the debris of clothes and fallen apples and crushed flowers and the picnic blanket in a heap. 

_Wow…_

She looked up at the sky and saw the sun had fully risen. She never slept this late. She sprang up and started wriggling into her clothes.

Hermes laughed high and the sound went up her spine. “Leaving so soon?” He asked with a mocking note.

Daphne couldn’t help but echo his laughter. She suddenly felt light, airy. She grabbed her sandals and slung them over her shoulder. “Yep!” She felt a bolt of giddy nerves. “Don't tell my boyfriend about this.”

Hermes drew his pinched thumb and index across his lips, zipping his mouth shut, and flashed her an _OK_ sign. She smiled and nodded and hurried from the grove.

She dashed back.

She pecked his lips.

She dashed away again, her heart pirouetting.

Hermes bit his lip and sucked the last smear of her raspberry lip gloss. His body was flowing with the purged, relaxed feeling he always got after an act of mischief. He felt like a scratched itch. And this time it was particularly delicious because it was multiplied by the satisfaction and satiation and confusion and wonderment of dozens of creatures all scattered through the park, like confetti out of a party popper. 

_It worked._

Eros moved beneath him. Hermes turned his head and smiled at Eros’ coiled, unravelling quiff and… Psyche? Ampelus? fluttering her wide, amber eyes. She and Eros’ unveiling gaze drifted to each other and painfully sweet looks nestled on their faces.

“Morning, lovebirds.” Hermes grinned.

Eros rubbed his pink sapphire eyes and cleared his throat. “Hey.”

His gaze stayed on the woman in the shell of his wing. Hermes beamed raucously, this hadn’t even been part of the plan. What a gorgeous cherry on the top. 

He levered himself up and padded about in the grass, looking for his boxers. He found them, fished them up and pulled them on, hopping about and flicking his feet to stay upright. 

“I'll give you two a minute.” He said.

They sent him warm looks and he winked and gave them an easy, two-fingered salute. He spun on his heel, folded his hands behind his head into the bushfire of his hair, and sauntered out to survey the beautiful wreckage.

Eros watched him go with a curious smile. But his attention quickly pulled irresistibly back to Psyche. She was in her disguise again, but it was her. Her hair had the same pouring syrup sleekness, her body felt and smelled and heated the same, her eyes, her captivating Psyche eyes…

“I can't believe you're here.” He whispered.

She looked into him. He felt his heart bobbing up like a rowboat.

“I'm so sorry.” They said together. “You? I should…”

They laughed. They shuffled to sit up, but he kept his arms and wing around her. He was suddenly terrified she might fly away, like a sparrow, he yearned to loop a silk thread around her foot and keep her by him in loving jealousy. 

“You’re Ampelus again.” He said gently.

Psyche sighed, stroking his forearm. “I don’t know why I could change back last night, I just felt it. But normally I can’t.”

The way her mouth moved, the way one nostril perked open a little as she spoke, the way her neck fluted into her shoulders. He was furious with himself. “I can't believe I didn't see it. It's you. Of course it's you.” He rolled his eyes. “Gods, I'm so embarrassed.”

She laughed. Gods, that laugh.

Eros was suddenly struck with a thought that stung. “And Ma's been keeping it from me, when she said you couldn’t come anywhere near.”

Psyche put her hand on his tensed jaw and it relaxed immediately. “Please don't be angry with her. She's been so good to me, she's kept me safe.” She said sincerely.

He leaned into her hand and nodded. He had to admit that. Psyche could have been killed. Ma had done so much to protect them both. Still… “I bet she's been struggling to keep a straight face at us being in the same room with me none the wiser.” 

Psyche stroked her thumb over his cheek and her smile dazzled. “You can't deny, Magic Man, it is pretty funny.”

Eros laughed and scooped her into his arms and hugged her tight. He nestled his face in her neck and breathed her in adoringly. “It doesn't matter.” He murmured, muffled in her sweet skin. “We're together now. That's all. That's everything.”

“Oh, my heart.” She stroked his hair and it was so soft and comforting it almost made him cry. 

He hugged her tighter, then released her, keeping his hands on her arms and moving his fingers around the shape of her.

“And now I have to go.” She said.

Eros jolted. “What?”

Psyche stroked his chest with the tender pressure she used when she was putting her foot down and trying to make him feel better about it. “This is still forbidden.” She sighed. “I have to go and handmaiden about. Be Ampelus.”

“Can't we just date with you as Ampelus?” He squeezed her arms and gave her a melting, pleading look.

She looked at him with such sweetness, then a hint of exasperation. “We could, if everyone involved hadn't at some point heard you say that you are so eternally in love with Psyche that you could never love anyone else ever again.”

Eros blushed and laughed awkwardly, glancing away then peeking at her under his curls. “That got back to you, huh?”

“It did.” Her eyes shone honey and she cupped his face, speaking with a waver in her voice. “And it makes Psyche happier than she ever thought it was possible to be. But it makes it very suspicious of you to be seen with Ampelus on your arm.”

Eros shrugged weakly. “We'll tell people I'm flighty.”

She pecked his nose. “Except they've all met you before. And they know how sweet and loyal and caring and true you are.”

He pawed at her waist. “This can't be it.”

“It won't be.” She steadied her voice. “But right now, I need to go.”

She drew his face close and kissed his brow, nuzzling his hair. 

They breathed together for a clinging moment.

She eased from his hands and stepped away, the sunlight sighing over the contours of her body. She tugged her dress over her head and it rippled down her form like steam. Eros felt his eyes go round, his heart somersaulted. He scrambled up and took her wrist and pulled her into his arms and kissed her. He kissed her and he made it real. He kissed her and he made it eternal. He kissed her and he was complete.

When their lips broke, they kept touching, his hands travelling over her back, mapping her into his instincts again. 

“Meet me tonight. Back here.” He whispered.

She smiled against his lips and nodded, her fingers tracing his abs and making him stir. “Oh Eros, tonight's so long from now.” She moaned softly and his blood heated.

“Not as long as I've waited to hear you say my name.” He brought her against his chest and kissed her again, her hands furling on his waist.

She flickered her tongue on his and murmured deliciously into his mouth. “Eros, Eros, Eros.”

He laughed, joy bubbling up his body. He kissed her again, and again, and again. 

He drew from her lips and he felt his heart trying to break free of his chest. 

“OK. Go.” He surrendered, aching. “Until tonight.”

“Tonight.”

One more kiss. One more fleeting relief from the pain of separation. As she walked away, he felt her haunting his hands and his lips and the heat between his thighs. He stared up to the pale wash of sky and let the light fill his eyes until they pricked and brimmed and overflowed. The tears that fell over his face and onto his shoulders cleansed him of the agony of the last few weeks, but they brought burgeoning new pains that he didn’t want to think about with the magical happiness of Psyche’s return. He drew his forearm across his eyes, sniffed loudly and shook his head clear. He pulled on his briefs and his trousers and shrugged on his shirt, leaving it open, letting the breeze calm him. He rolled his tie carefully and tucked it into his pocket. He’d have to hunt for his jacket later. He rubbed his jaw. He put his hands in his pockets and strode off to look for Hermes. 

He had some questions.

Hermes lounged back on a long table among the toppled glasses and rainbow froth, propped on his elbows, one leg crossed over the other. He swigged the abandoned half of a champagne bottle, wearing his boxers and someone else’s suit jacket. He watched the scene unfold before him with a fox’s smile. New feelings, sealed promises, broken oaths, pretty things set free, and troubling forces bound up. 

Over at the platforms, Aphrodite looked like the cat who got the cream, and who knew she fucking deserved it. Calypso held her hand and chattered blithely, Ares snuggled to her back with his brow pressed to the back of her head and his nose buried in her hair. The last of the pollution of war, that always put distance between them, seemed well and truly out of his system. _Welcome back, Man._

Hecate, Artemis and Athena emerged from the woodland. Athena looked as confident as ever. She slid her hands into her pockets and nodded to the others and ambled away. Artemis lingered. She watched her mentor go. She looked conflicted. _Come on, Arty._ Hecate came to her side and said something with a small, clever smile. She held out her phone for Artemis. Artemis hesitated. _Come on._ She took it. She typed into it and handed it back. Hecate grinned. She plucked Artemis’ hand, kissed it and walked away. Artemis touched the spot Hecate had kissed and stared after her with her mouth slack. _Yes! Hecate, you smooth bitch._

Daphne turned at the edge of the park to take one last look at the party. She spotted him. They exchanged a smile. She waved, looked down shyly, and vanished. _You’re gonna be OK, Petal. That guy’s gotta learn he doesn’t own you girls._

Zeus and Hera walked slowly, skirting the edges of the trees. She was tucked into his jacket and they were talking softly. Zeus looked serious and gentle. Hera looked taller than before. _Maybe this time, eh your majesties?_

A crack of laughter hit Hermes and he glanced at the craps table. The nymphs tossed Poseidon’s underwear between them as he leaped and snatched to get it back, his junk flapping about ridiculously and Amphitrite cackling and filming it on her phone. _We have got to hang out more._

Hermes' chuckle faded and warmed as he saw a cute little pink powder puff on the arm of a great raven, disappearing into the sunrise. _Now that is a picture. Maybe TGOEM won’t mind so much anymore. And maybe the king and my dumbass roommate have bigger angel fish to fry. Fates, the Goddess of Love might even help. Good luck to ya, you beautiful creatures._

“There you are, you naughty little bird.” 

Hermes perked up at Eros’ smooth call. The stylish cut of the rosy god’s suit still lay against him with distracting handsomeness, even in pieces and not done up. Actually, not done up was better.

“Hey, Hot Stuff.” Hermes raised the bottle to him.

Eros perched his pretty ass on the table edge and kicked one foot over the other, folding his large arms, his bicep rounding under his shirt. He looked almost rakish with his tousled hair and casually bared chest, the colour of strawberry mousse. 

_I am an excellent influence on that guy._

Hermes held out the bottle for Eros to take a swig. Eros raised a sceptical eyebrow, but accepted. He swigged, then pulled a repulsed face and handed it back.

“Warm and flat.” He said, sucking in through his teeth and grabbing a grape from a bowl at his hip to take the taste away.

“It's the new fashion.” Hermes shrugged and swigged again. He eyed Eros. There was a dried tear track down his cheek. “So, that's the girl?”

Eros nodded and stared wistfully ahead. “That's her.”

Hermes nodded the bottle, as if toasting, and grinned. “Congrats, Man. Also, you’re welcome.” 

Eros ticked his jaw and turned to Hermes with a wry smile that rather suited his usually graceful mouth. “I'm trying to think of a quip, but you know what? Fair play to you. Thank you.”

Hermes saluted with two fingers and gulped the awful champagne. He looked up to the fresh, cloudless sky and spoke matter-of-factly. “People think I don't know what I'm doing, and they're right, but they should trust it'll work out anyway.”

Eros tipped his head thoughtfully. “I've heard worse philosophies.”

Hermes breathed the scent of disturbed earth with deep satisfaction, he could hear swifts and robins waking up. “Chaos moves around all of us, my distractingly sexy friend. But for some it moves like a whirlpool, for some a runaway train, and for some a pack of loyal, fun-loving hounds, leaping about and wagging their tails and barking ‘What next, master? What next?’”

Eros laughed like a cowbell. “So, what is next?”

Hermes kept looking to the sky. A hundred possibilities raced through his mind. It was a different world this morning, what threads of fate might be awaiting him? 

He took a deep draught from the bottle and smacked his lips. “Pancakes.”

Eros clapped a hand on Hermes’ knee and squeezed it. “Sounds perfect.”

He held out his hand and Hermes took it. Eros pulled him with a mock groan and creaking noise. Hermes swivelled on his ass and hopped down, Eros straightened up in a fluid, heavy movement. They fell into step with one another and started to wander from the park, the champagne swinging by its neck from Hermes’ fingers. 

“You want to get dressed first?” Eros asked.

Hermes waved his hand. “I'm dressed enough.”

“New fashion again?”

“Once I've been seen in it.”

Eros glanced down at the boxers with an amused twitch of his lips. “The eggplant pattern is especially tasteful.”

Hermes was amazed this hadn’t come up last night. He looked down at his lilac boxers covered in a cartoon eggplant print. He flashed a proud grin. “I know, right?”

Eros chuckled. “It's almost as if you were planning an orgy all along.”

Hermes looked at Eros coyly under his spray of red hair. “I couldn't possibly say.” He nudged Eros’ shoulder with his and wiggled his eyebrows. “Hey, speaking of, are we still on for a mid-air booty call sometime?”

It was Eros’ turn to be coy. “I don't know, I have a soulmate now.”

“Well, maybe.” Hermes waved the bottle at him. “But you also made a promise to a very dear, very horny friend, so I don't give a flying fuck about your ‘having a soulmate’.” He ducked in front of Eros to catch his eye with a flaring grin. “Do you see what I did there?”

“Yep.”

“Because we'd be having a flying fuck.”

“I did get it.”

“I'm here all week, tip your waitresses.”

Eros rolled his eyes. “Gods, and this is you in the afterglow.”

“Nah, slept the afterglow off.” Hermes said. He took a deep breath and puffed out his chest and boomed out to the quiet, setting the rooks off squawking. “On to the next adventure!”

Eros burst into beautiful, boyish laughter and slung his arm around Hermes’ shoulders. Hermes was enveloped in his warmth and the scent of his sweat, still laced with sweetness and classy cologne. The weight of his arm was heavy and his delectable eyes sparkled. There were grass stains down his shirt. 

“Pancakes first.” Eros said.

Hermes looped his arm around his waist and squeezed. “Pancakes first.”

They relinquished each other and kept ambling.

“Can I ask you something?” Eros said after a moment.

“Shoot.” Hermes said into the champagne bottle.

“Why'd it have to be masks?”

Hermes faltered. He finished swallowing his mouthful and avoided Eros’ eye. “Do I need a reason?”

Eros bowed his head to hook Hermes’ gaze back, he had a magnetism that made it very difficult not to look at him. “No, but I think you had one.” His tone turned a little more pressing. “You're not a theatrical guy, generally.”

Hermes huffed and shrugged, running his hand through his hair. “Everyone is masked anyway, every day, wearing whatever face suits the people and the scene around them.” He swilled the last of the liquid in the bottle. “Give them another mask to wear, and they might leave the usual ones at home.”

Eros nodded pensively. “The bliss of chaos.”

Hermes nodded too.

Eros’ next question came gentler. “Why now?”

Hermes stayed quiet.

“Hermes?” Eros sounded like a favourite school teacher talking compassionately to a mischief maker, instead of giving him detention. 

_This guy is too sweet and it’s fucking dangerous._

“Because things are coming to a head.” Hermes heard himself confess with a thud of his pulse, looking ahead of them into the tangle of long, pale shadows from the trees.

Eros frowned. “What things?” 

Hermes puffed out his cheeks and put his hand in the pocket of the pilfered jacket. There was a wallet in there. _Nice_. He glanced sidelong at Eros, drained the bottle and slung it into the grass. It thunked and rolled away. “I can't explain it all. I don't know it all. All I can say is, I can feel a lot of different meteorites about to collide, and when the dust settles, I don't know if everyone will be OK. I guess I thought if I could shake things up before the crash, maybe I could throw them all off course, disperse them before they hit.”

Eros looked at him tenderly. “The chaos of bliss.” He murmured.

Hermes nodded again. 

“Did it work?”

“Think so.” Hermes rolled his shoulders, letting the severity he’d heard in his tone tumble into the soil. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

He gave Eros a brash grin. It flickered as Eros did not return it, his achingly pretty look of concern unrelenting.

“Hermes.” Eros said firmly. “It's not your job to rescue everyone. We're not all a litter of kittens you found in a cardboard box.”

“No.” Hermes conceded. “But, I'm the messenger. And the messenger’s job is to connect people, to weave all these lonely, screwed up knots together into a big, beautiful, happy tapestry.”

He looked up at the sky as if making a promise. Was he?

“Sounds like being a god of sex.” Eros smiled at last.

Hermes glanced at him and winked. “What a pair we make.”

“Always have.” Eros cocked an eyebrow. They shared a flirtatious look. Eros broke it and recovered his gentle, pressing care. “Hermes, listen, last night was really something. But, take it from someone who knows, and his therapist, being the world's benevolent puppeteer isn't all it's cracked up to be.”

Hermes scoffed but his cheeks pricked and he winced at the excessive breeziness in his voice. “I'm not a puppeteer.”

Eros gave him an extremely unconvinced look. “Aren't you?”

“No.” Hermes insisted, spreading his smile across his face, like cream cheese. “Magician, fortune teller, that guy with the rigged stall where you shoot metal ducks. But puppeteer’s a carnival act too far for me.”

Eros shook his head. He dropped his hand and it brushed against Hermes’ wrist vanishing into his pocket. His voice was chamomile tea. “Just, be careful, yeah?” He kept stroking his wrist with the back of his finger. “And talk to me, if you need to. You don't have to be this mysterious, tricky sprite all on your own.”

Hermes clucked his tongue. “Actually, doing it on your own is a big part of the sprite aesthetic.”

“Hermes.” Eros dipped into Hermes’ pocket and retrieved his hand. “I'm serious.” He interlaced their fingers and held him firm. “Any time, OK? I'm there.”

Hermes opened his mouth to laugh it off. But Eros’ hand was warm and his gaze was warm and the memories of teasing and kissing and binding and sex were warm. Hermes forced himself to meet Eros’ eyes sincerely. He nodded and stroked his thumb over their joined hands.

Eros smiled and the intensity vanished as quickly as it had descended. He swung their hands comically. “OK, Jam Pot, let's roll this carnival out and get those pancakes.”

Hermes filled with mocking glee. “Oof.”

“What?”

“No, nothing.” Hermes said around a whisking laugh. “It's just, uh, your mom calls me Jam Pot.”

Eros whipped his hand away and recoiled. “Ack! Dude!”

Hermes erupted into firework laughter and tossed his hair out of his eyes. “What? Would you rather I just let it slide?”

“Yes!” Eros cried. “If the choice is between tell Eros what his mom calls you in bed and don't tell Eros what his mom calls you in bed, ALWAYS DON’T TELL!”

“OK! OK!” Hermes cackled. “It's not like I gave you the full pet names list.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“Strawberry Tart.”

“No!”

“Red Velvet.”

“Stooooop!”

“I told you, we have a dessert theme!”

“I hate this.”

“Actually not always, my personal favourite is Scarlet Fever.”

“HERMES!”

Eros clamped his hands over his ears and took off at a run. Hermes hooted with laughter and it soared in his chest as he picked up his feet and raced after the stream of pink feathers and the bounce of that cute, round ass. Laughter was all around him, inside him, under his feet, lifting his body, whooshing through his hair, strimming everything from his being except for joy.

Joy.

Ecstasy.

Wildness.

Freedom.

Mischief.

Bliss.

Chaos.

_Mmmm, yeah. Today is gonna be a good day._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you once again to @chinchela_art (Instagram and Patreon) and her wonderful community of patrons for the "Orgy" prompt and a bonkers amount of love and encouragement for what ended up being a bit of a project - go look at her awesome art! It is hawt.
> 
> This was crazy fun to write, it was so great getting to experiment with this many dynamics and ideas. Erotica gives so much freedom to get a (literally) intimate look at characters and working on this definitely inspired me to challenge myself more in smut. Big loooove to the kind friends and commenters that made this feel so special to try!
> 
> Keep it Safe (check your technique), Sane (check your frame of mind) and Consensual (check your partner) and have fun! Sex Nerd Sandra has a [cool episode](https://archive.nerdist.com/sex-nerd-sandra-104-getting-laid-at-burning-man/) on the Orgy Dome at Burning Man. 
> 
> Yes, there is indeed an Annie Lennox song for every section. It just sort of happened. I'm confident she's flattered.


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